Here’s a question that I’ve been thinking about today. We are all familiar with debts, and probably have heard the translation of the Lord’s Prayer that says “forgive us our debts.” We are asking God to forgive us of our sins against Him. That is what we are supposed to do. But, we keep trying to add in another step; repayment of the loan.<\/p>\n

Here is how I picture it (you can use different imagery if you want). Someone walks into God’s office and tells Him about what they owe. They ask Him to forgive the debt, which He gladly does. Now, this person, instead of being thankful, begins telling about the repayment plan. “OK, thanks for that God. Here is what I had in mind. I’ll give You an hour each week in church, and I’ll try to work up to giving You two or three hours as time goes by. I’d rather not get too crazy right off the bat. Also, I’ll add 10 or 15 minutes each day. I should be able to carve that amount out easily enough. So, with that, I’ll be giving back… let’s see, add those two, multiply here, carry the four… 113 hours a year in the beginning, and working up to 247 hours. I think we can round that up to 250 with special services at Easter and Christmas. How does that sound to You, God?”<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what look would be on God’s face at that point. If it were me, I’d have my head in my hands and be making sighing noises. God is a lot more patient than I am, though.<\/p>\n

What makes this worse, if that’s possible, is that we would admit the absurdity of it if someone were to ask us about paying God back. We know it can’t be done. Yet, we think a few hours a week in church and a quick prayer in the morning is all that it takes to be in step with His will. Jesus ransomed each one of us. He gave His all, why do we think He is only worth 2.85% of our time?<\/p>\n

I realize that four hours of formal prayer a day is not going to happen for most people. I know that distance and work can get in the way of being at every single service your church has. But, these “formal” times with God are just parts of being in communion with Him on a daily basis. I’d like to have everything figured out on this, but this whole post was as much for my benefit as anyone else who might read it.<\/p>\n

If we were able to pay our sin debt off, Jesus would not have had to lay down His life. Does that mean we don’t have to spend time in prayer or with other believers? Nope, it means that we shouldn’t view these as ways to pay back a loan from God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a question that I’ve been thinking about today. We are all familiar with debts, and probably have heard the translation of the Lord’s Prayer that says “forgive us our debts.” We are asking God to forgive us of our sins against Him. That is what we are supposed to do. But, we keep trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1380,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379\/revisions\/1380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}