The Door For God

Joyce Meyer said I learned a long time ago that yes, I may be doing something for them by releasing them. I’m opening the door for god to be able to work in their life, if I will pray for them because maybe people who have been hurting someone else, maybe they don’t even know how to pray for themselves.  So when we pray for them, it opens the door for God to work in their life. But it also releases us and we can go ahead and enjoy our life while god is taking care of our enemies.

Pastor Billy Joe: When Jesus told that story about the unforgiving servant — he was forgiven so much and then he found one of his own servants and basically the comparison was like 15 cents to several million dollars, and he wouldn’t forgive him when he pleaded and begged for forgiveness. And when the king found out, he called him in and said, “I forgave you this great debt. Why didn’t you forgive this one of such a small miner?”  and he said, “deliver him to the tormentors.” I think there are a lot of people in bitterness and unforgiveness — they’ve been delivered to the tormentors. And that what you’re saying of being set free, being set free from torment is just a wonderful thing in life!

Joyce Meyer: The definition of forgiveness, it says that when someone hurts you, then you feel they owe you. They owe you. But to forgive is to cancel that debt. Just like god canceled our debts because of the blood sacrifice of Jesus, his willingness to suffer on our behalf, and god canceled our debts, we now have not only the ability but the privilege to cancel someone else’s debts to set them free so god can work in their life. You know, I was abused by my dad, and it was really bad for a lot of years. This wasn’t just like someone little time, one off thing that happened.

According to Joyce Meyer that it was just a lot, a lot, a lot. Of course, I had all the bitterness, the hatred, the resentment and so on and so forth, and God began to deal with me about those things. One of the things that he showed me is found in Matthew 18 where you were just talking about the 15 cents versus the millions of dollars. When the servant who had been forgiven… I’d been forgiven my sins by god… But when that servant who had been forgiven then tried to collect a debt that someone owed him… The thing that was so freeing to me, pastor, was that it says right there in Matthew 18: he could not pay. He could not pay. And when I was reading that, it was just like… “my father can’t pay me back.” how could he give me back my childhood? How could he give me back the self-respect that he took? The innocence that he took? He has no ability to take away the shame that he gave me. But God promises us in his word that we will be delivered from the shame of our youth — in Isaiah 54, I believe it is.