{"id":941,"date":"2010-03-19T07:00:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T06:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/?p=941"},"modified":"2010-02-20T11:59:10","modified_gmt":"2010-02-20T10:59:10","slug":"lenten-devotions-2010-friday-19-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/2010\/03\/19\/lenten-devotions-2010-friday-19-march\/","title":{"rendered":"Lenten Devotions 2010: Friday 19 March"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>\u201cAnd forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Lord&#8217;s Prayer, Fifth Petition<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0Forgiveness does not come easy for me.\u00a0 \u201cDo unto others worse than they have done to you\u201d is more my motto.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But this was not the way of Jesus.\u00a0 Jesus turned the other cheek, even when Roman soldiers were beating and mocking Him.\u00a0 And while they were driving sharp nails into His hands and feet, Jesus prayed \u201cFather forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.\u201d\u00a0 When Jesus hung there on the cross, it was not those sharp nails that pinned Him there; NO, it was my sin, and yours, that held Him there.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I once attended a Good Friday service, where the pastor had a wooden cross, a hammer, and some nails.\u00a0 He invited the congregation forward and encouraged each person to take a nail and hammer it into the cross as a reminder of the fact that it was my sin that took Jesus to the cross.\u00a0 And as this was happening, he said the words, \u201cFather forgive them\u201d.\u00a0 It was a genuinely powerful demonstration of the love and forgiveness of our Saviour.\u00a0 Jesus freely and willingly forgave me for sending Him to the cross and having to suffer hell in my place.\u00a0 Knowing this wondrous fact, knowing that my enormous and incalculable debt to God has been paid, how then can I not forgive those who do me wrong?\u00a0 Through the boundless forgiveness of Christ, we are enabled to forgive others.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.\u00a0 <\/strong><strong>Amen.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAnd forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Lord&#8217;s Prayer, Fifth Petition \u00a0Forgiveness does not come easy for me.\u00a0 \u201cDo unto others worse than they have done to you\u201d is more my motto.\u00a0 But this was not the way of Jesus.\u00a0 Jesus turned the other cheek, even when Roman soldiers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent-devotions-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":942,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}