Based on Matthew 6:5-15
As I finish reading this passage I reflect on forgiveness. Jesus seems to go off on a tangent about forgiveness in the middle of his seminar on prayer. It seems forgiveness is pretty important. I wonder what the difference would be if people at church always forgave each other. Could Jesus really mean that if you don't forgive you will be lost? Lose your salvation?
Forgiveness must be important and have something to do with prayer. Pray for those you need to forgive - something simple - and forgive them as often as it takes. If you forgive others, you can be forgiven too. That may sound like salvation by works, but that is what Jesus says.
It's not actually salvation by works. It's quite simple. Faith works through love in the saved. Forgiveness is the result of true conversion. No forgiveness is evidence of no conversion. If you ask God to help you forgive and then do it, you have just proved to yourself that you are saved.
Long prayers and vain repetitions. Both have in common the disorganisation and rambling nature of the kind of prayer I am often guilty of. I need to make my prayer more focused and organised somehow, I'll start by getting a prayer journal.
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