Seventy Times Seven

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 65, Seventy Times Seven.

"Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times." Matthew 18, verses 21 and 22.

Stay with that for just a moment.

Peter asked that question thinking he already knew the answer — and thinking the answer was impressive. Seven times. Seven was a lot. Seven meant patience, seven meant a generous spirit, seven meant you were serious about your faith. And Jesus looked at him and gave him a number nobody can track.

Seventy times seven.

But Jesus wasn't raising the ceiling. He was ending the arithmetic altogether. Because real forgiveness — the kind that flows from God — keeps no score. It has no ledger. It does not file offenses away in some back drawer to be pulled out later, on a hard day, in the middle of an argument. Love, the Word says, keeps no record of wrongs. And every time you truly forgive, you tear one more page out of the ledger that bitterness has been keeping so carefully on your behalf.

I know this is hard. I know there are wounds that changed something in you. There are betrayals that shifted the ground beneath your feet. There are words that were spoken that simply will not leave. And the flesh wants to count. The flesh wants to remember. The flesh wants to hold onto that offense like evidence, like armor, like proof that you had every right to feel what you felt.

But hear this: forgiving again and again is not repeated weakness. It is training. It is the Father shaping His own heart inside of yours. Every time you choose to let an offense go — again, one more time, the tenth time, the fortieth time, time seventy — you are not losing something. You are becoming someone. You are becoming someone who looks a little more like God.

And there is one more thing that has to be said.

How many times has He forgiven you the same fault? The one you are almost ashamed to bring before Him again. The one you promised you were done with — and then weren't. God has not lost count. He simply is not counting. The measure He uses with you is the exact measure He is asking of you.

That is not an accusation. That is an invitation.

So today — before breakfast, before you pick up your phone, before the day takes over — do one thing. Name the offense you have counted the most. The one you know by heart. The one that rises up when it gets quiet. And forgive it again. Not because the person deserves it. Not because it is easy. But because you have been forgiven — and because that one small, quiet act tears a page from the scorecard and opens your heart just a little wider to the heart of the Father.

It doesn't have to be grand. It just has to be real.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.