Derek Prince Secret of a Prayer Warrior | Forgive Those Who Have Hurt You

 6. Forgive Those Who Have Hurt You

In the Sermon on the Mount, one of the things Jesus taught us to say, as I suppose we all know, is this: “Forgive us our debts [our trespasses], as we forgive our debtors [those who trespass against us]” (Matthew 6:12). Forgive us as we forgive others. What we might not realize is that this is an important condition for receiving answers to prayer.

I have found in counseling, and dealing with people in general, that this is one of the most common sources of blockage and frustration in the spiritual life and of failure to receive answers to prayer. Usually it involves one specific person. I was talking once with someone who sought help, and I said, “Is there anybody you haven’t forgiven?”

She said, “Yes,” and mentioned a distinguished person in the judiciary department of the United States. I said, “If you want release, you’ll have to forgive him. There’s no alternative. If you don’t forgive him, God doesn’t forgive you.” Forgive us as we forgive others.

Jesus has limited us to asking God for forgiveness only in the proportion that we forgive others. Are you willing to forgive? Remember this, my friend, forgiveness is not an emotion; it is a decision. I call it “tearing up the IOU.” 

Somebody owes you three thousand dollars. All right. Tear up the IOU. Because do you know how much you owe God? Six million dollars. Do you want Him to tear up that IOU? You tear up yours; He will tear up His. That is His unvarying law. You cannot change God. He demands that we forgive if we want Him to forgive us.

The last petition in the Lord’s Prayer is a petition for deliverance from Satan. “Deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13) is the correct translation. You and I have no right to pray for deliverance till we have forgiven others as we would have God forgive us.

Jesus also said, “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him” (Mark 11:25). Now that does not leave out anything or anybody. When you pray, forgive, “that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses” (verses 25–26). This is absolutely clear—and it is spoken to Christians, those who have God as their heavenly Father. Before you and I pray, we must forgive. It will do no good to try to approach God in prayer with unforgiveness in our hearts against anybody about anything.

7. Be Directed by the Holy Spirit

The last two conditions—be directed by the Holy Spirit and ask according to God’s Word—help us understand how to pray the will of God. We will see that the power of the Holy Spirit works through our prayers only insofar as they are in line with the Word of God.

Let’s begin with this verse: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Romans 8:14). That is a continuing present tense in the Greek. As many as are regularly led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. How do you live daily as a son or daughter of God in this world? It is by being regularly, continually led by the Holy Spirit.

Later on in Romans 8 the apostle Paul applied this truth about the leading of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life specifically to prayer: 

Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses [infirmities]. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He [the Spirit] makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. Verses 26–27 Paul said that the Spirit comes to the help of our weaknesses or infirmities, and that we all have a certain specific infirmity. It is not a physical sickness; it is not a disease. It is part of our carnal nature. What is this weakness? We do not know what to pray for as we ought. Or to state it another way, we do not always know what to pray for, and even if we do, many times we still do not know how to pray for it. You might know that your son needs prayer or your friend needs prayer, but you still do not know how to pray.

What is God’s solution? The Spirit of God comes to your help in this infirmity. How? He takes over and makes intercession through you, praying according to the will of God. So when we do not know how to pray according to the mind of God, when we are faced with a need that we do not know how to pray about, what do we do? We turn to the Holy Spirit and say, “Holy Spirit, You take over and pray through me.”

This is one of the glorious blessings of being truly baptized with the Holy Spirit. It is why I believe the baptism with the Holy Spirit must be consummated by supernatural utterance where the Holy Spirit speaks and not the believer. Or rather the Holy Spirit gives the believer a language to speak that the believer does not know. When the believer has yielded himself in this manner, the Spirit Himself prays through him, making intercession for him with groanings that cannot be uttered. He prays for the saints according to the will of God. He prays the prayer that God wants to hear and wants to answer. How wonderful to realize that when we do not know how to pray, we can turn to God and let His Spirit loose! When He prays through us in unknown tongues we are praying the right prayer. We know that it is the right prayer because the Holy Spirit is giving us that prayer, and He prays according to the revealed will of God. He takes over our vocal organs and our inner nature, and He holds a prayer meeting inside us! This is God’s glorious provision for every believer in Christ.

I remember once when my first wife, Lydia, and I were in Denmark, which was her native land, at the end of October. We were planning a trip to Britain for the month of November. One morning as we were praying together sitting up in bed as we often did, she launched out in prayer and I heard her say this:

“Lord, give us fine weather all the time we’re in Britain.”

Well, I nearly fell out of the bed. I said to her afterward, “Do you know what you prayed?” She shook her head. I said, “You prayed for God to give us fine weather all the time we’re in Britain.” She did not even recall praying it. It did not come from her mind at all—it was given by the Spirit.

I said, “You know what Britain is like in November. It’s cold, damp, misty, foggy—utterly unpleasant.” We had lived in Britain long enough to know what November is like. But do you know what happened? We went to Britain and the whole month of November was like spring. I have never seen a November like that in all the years I have lived there.

When we left, the last day of November, we said to our friends who had come to see us off at the airport, “You’d better look out now—the weather’s going to change!” When we have come to the end of our limited understanding, when we have used up our own poor mental resources, what do we do? We turn it over to the Holy Spirit. He is equal to the task. My first wife’s favorite text on prayer was, “Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Psalm 81:10, kjv).

Just give the Holy Spirit your mouth and let Him fill it. He is longing to pray through you.

The Bible says we should pray always, pray without ceasing (see 1 Thessalonians 5:17; Ephesians 6:18). Can any of us in our own natural strength and understanding pray always and without ceasing? Absolutely not. But when we let the Holy Spirit in and turn it over to Him, He conducts a prayer meeting 24 hours a day.

You can pray in your sleep, you know. This is a fact. Many people have been heard to speak in tongues hours on end while lying in sleep. In the Song of Solomon the bride says, “I sleep, but my heart is awake” (Song of Solomon 5:2). That is one of the beauties of the Bride of Christ: Her heart stays awake praying in the Spirit while her mind and her body are getting refreshing sleep. You can spend hours in prayer and wake up fresh as a daisy in the morning. This is praying on the level of God’s revealed will. It is letting the Holy Spirit help our infirmities; He can take over and pray the way God wants us to pray.

As we noted earlier, Paul said that God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we could ever figure or reason or think of asking with our natural minds. When I have thought of the highest I can think of, when I reach the limit of my natural thinking and reasoning as to what God can and should do, then I can let the Holy Spirit in and move on to a higher plane in prayer. And it is that level of prayer on which every child of God has the right to live and move and have his being.