The Lord’s Prayer

Joyce: One time I was doing a series on forgiveness and not being offended. One of the women in the congregation who came to this weekly meeting decided that she would do a little thing to find out more about this thing of being offended. So she took a piece of paper and for seven days, every single time she had the opportunity to be offended and had to choose to either take that offense or forgive, she made a little check mark. At the end of the week she had had 40 opportunities in seven days. Forty opportunities in seven days to either forgive or to store up that offense.

Pastor Billy Joe: A lot of don’t even realize how often they let little offenses, little hurts, little wounds build up inside their life. Jesus spoke about forgiveness so much. In the Lord’s prayer, it’s the only portion of the Lord’s prayer that is repeated after the prayer. He talked about that we’re to forgive even as our father in heaven forgives us — forgiving trespasses — but then after the prayer is ended, he said, “for if you do not forgive, neither will your father in heaven.” he reiterated that portion and I think it’s because of all the things in the prayer, that’s the one we need to focus on the most.

Joyce: I know we have all kinds of different situations that come up in our life, but you had a particular kind of a public situation that took place that some people may have even seen news footage of this event on TV. Tell us what happened to you.

Pastor Billy Joe: I was preaching in November of 2005. I walked down to the altar, praying for people one-by-one. There were maybe 100 people up there, lined up across the front. I didn’t really count, but there were a lot of folks there. I came to this one man and he was just kind of staring at me. I asked him if there was something I could pray for.