“And the prayer of faith shall save the sick…” James 5:15
James 5:15-16
“And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.”
In life you will have many opportunities to be offended—don’t take any of them. Being offended can make you sick. How? Hurt feelings and bitter thinking creates a festering wound…
“Why did he do that to me?”
“Something must be wrong with me for them to treat me like that.”
“I would have this if she hadn’t stolen, lied…” and on and on.
“Germy” thoughts like those make us emotionally ill. Once wounded, we can be healed. The remedy is forgiveness. Forgiveness kills tormenting thoughts.
Consider this. In our physical bodies we build up our immune system by getting a vaccination so we can fight off the viruses in our environment. However, the vaccine is made up of the same virus that will make us sick. Exposure to the illness helps our body learn how to fight off the sickness.
Could it be that remembering we have offended people too (often in the same manner) helps us to show compassion when we are offended?
In Matthew 6:12,14 & 15, Jesus tells us we should ask God to “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Why? He says “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
So why do we have such a hard time forgiving, even if we know that nursing a grudge can make us sick with bitterness? Because they owe us and we want to get paid!
In Matthew 18, Jesus tells the parable of a King who forgave a servant of his debt. The man owed the King 10,000 talents—that’s approximately $2,250,000,000 dollars today or the equivalent of 180 years’ worth of wages!* The compassionate King forgave the servant because he begged for mercy.Later, the same servant went out and demanded payment from another servant who owed him hundred pence—that’s only $16 today*—and had the man thrown into prison until he repaid the debt. When the King learned of this, he threw the wicked servant into prison.
The moral of the parable is: The King treated the servant the same way the servant had treated others.
If we forgive others, God will also forgive us. Then, we will all be well.
Sources:http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_is_10000_talents_worth#slide1 based on the Weights & Measures Table in NIV Study Bible andhttp://www.biblestudy.org/beginner/bible-weights-and-measures.html
