SOME SONGS BY
CERTAIN VICTORY:

• All Away
• Bear Each Other
• Brand New Thing
• Certain Victory
• Down That Hole
• An Explanation of Benefits
• I Want You
• If Leprosy Consumes Me
• If You Don't Understand
• Manacles and Dreams
• The Morning Train
• Oh, Well (A Meditation)
• Redeem Me
• See Forevermore
• Somerset
• Stand
• Take Me There
• Ten Thousand Aganist Me
• Three Hills
• Who You Are
• You Make Me Aright

  Back to "Music"

  ---

  
  Visit us at MySpace.com!

  
  Primum Mobile Magazine

  This site features wonderful Evangelism techniques and resources:
  

  All Scripture quotations taken
  from the NASB.

by Paul Lytle

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Matthew 6:12

Taken, it's part of me
Now gone, brought out of reach
I try, but cannot cease

I snatch a part of Him
Twisted, and turned to sin
Now I ask for release
As though I deserve peace
Do I deserve peace?

I can't compete
I can't let go
I cannot care
Take me there

With all of my feats
All that I know
I cannot bear
Take me there

Wrested, and it is lost
A thing, but at a cost
I brood, and look well back

Broken, I tear apart
Wasted, and broken heart
Now it's time to act
I seek a new pact
I seek a new pact

I am too weak
I can't forgive
Beauty so rare
Take me there

All that I seek
All I can give
Just tell me where
And take me there

*          *          *

Heavenly Father, I ask for the ability to forgive. Left to myself, I will forever and futilely be chasing debts. I pray that you teach me your mercy. Amen.

"And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." I fear that most of my prayers have left off that second part. That fact was brought to my attention very clearly one day. A good sum of money was missing from a deposit I had made. I thought that I must have dropped the check, but I didn't remember seeing it. But then I discovered that the check had, indeed, already cleared the bank, leaving no chance to put a stop payment on it.

I thought for sure that someone had found it in the bank and cashed it. I seethed with hatred for this man I didn't know. I didn't really need the money, but certainly could have used it.

Suddenly, I was reminded of something I had read in Mere Christianity only a couple of days before. In the book, C. S. Lewis is musing on this very section of the Lord’s Prayer, saying, "'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven."

I knew I was wrong to hate this man, but still forgiveness was slow in coming. But I prayed on the subject, and I was able, through God's help (and only through His help) to forgive.

What really got me was the realization that nothing anyone can do to me will ever be worse than what I do to God. If I cannot forgive those people, then I have no right to be forgiven.

The next day, I learned that the whole thing was a clerical error. The deposit slip had been filled out incorrectly and the teller hadn't noticed. But the mistake was caught very quickly, and the money was put into my account. There was no thief, and there never was.

I do not believe my sin was any less because it was directed at a figment of my imagination. I also do not think the lesson God gave me was any less because I had forgiven a fictional character rather than a real person.

Many of the songs I write are based on my own weaknesses. This is one of them. I wrote the lyrics to this song that very day in the hopes to remind myself of what had happened. I pray the song will be a constant reminder to forgive, just as Christ has forgiven us.

-Paul