In Need Of A Miracle - The One Year Praying through the Bible for Your Kids

“If another believer sins, rebuke that person; then if there is repentance, forgive. Even if that person wrongs you seven times a day and each time turns again and asks forgiveness, you must forgive.” The apostles said to the Lord, “Show us how to increase our faith.” The Lord answered, “If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘May you be uprooted and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you!” Luke 17:3-6

“WRONGS YOU SEVEN TIMES A DAY.” It can sound like the repeated refrain we hear from the backseat of the car or from the playroom or around the dinner table. We tell our children to say they’re sorry, and we tell the offended party to forgive. But we know that to be truly repentant and to truly forgive real wrongs require so much more than words. These acts take a miracle in the heart, which seems to be what Jesus promises in these verses.

Recognizing that they didn’t have in themselves the needed resource for this radical kind of forgiving, the apostles told Jesus they needed more faith. But Jesus said it wasn’t more faith they needed; they already had enough. Jesus was saying that if his gospel had any place at all in their hearts—even the size of a mustard seed—they had what they needed to forgive. The same is true for us and for our children: If we have enough faith to believe that God has forgiven us our enormous debt of sin, we have what we need to forgive the debts of others.

Just a mustard seed’s worth of comprehension of God’s forgiveness is enough to break our hearts over the enormity of our own sin and the greatness of his mercy. We, in turn, can extend mercy to someone who has hurt or offended us. Jesus wants to help us become as forgiving as he is, but he knows that we don’t have what it takes to do that on our own—but then, if we are in him, we are not on our own.

Lord, you have given us the faith we need to entrust our lives to you, but sometimes the faith to entrust the deep hurts and ongoing offenses we’ve experienced from both inside and outside our family seems harder to come by. Would you help us to grasp the enormity of our sin and the generosity of your forgiveness so we might extend that kind of forgiveness to each other? We don’t want to just demand that our children forgive; we want them to see it in the lives of their parents.