Sid Roth

Sid: There is a key, a prayer if you will, that will release blessings in your life beyond anything you ever thought. I have on the telephone from Lancaster, England Peter Horrobin. Peter I have to believe that this is one of the major keys to physical healing; one of the major keys for removing obstacles and barriers between someone and God this most powerful prayer which is a prayer of forgiveness. But we were talking on yesterday’s broadcast about a most important area and that is what about someone that is in an ongoing situation where they’re being verbally abused. How in the world? I mean yes they have to keep forgiving but enough is enough.  If you would talk a little bit about this from what you said yesterday and then continue the thought.

Peter:  Well, I really feel sorry for people that are in that situation it’s not just sorrow it’s actually a huge amount of compassion because it’s not an uncommon problem.  There’s false teaching I believe in the church which says that you just got to keep on forgiving and being a doormat for everybody else.  I believe that they’re actually comes a time when one has to rise up in righteous anger; the scripture says “Be angry and sin not” and to actually put up a barrier and say “I forgive you for what you’re doing but I’m not going to allow you to do it anymore.” And sometimes there are consequences of that and of those decisions but it takes that sort of godly resistance to actually bring people to a place of realizing what they’re doing.  This often happens inside families where you’ve got maybe a mother, or a mother-in-law, or a brother-in-law, husband and wife, or children and they’ve just taken advantage of people and speak out horrible things day in and day out and they crush people’s spirits.  When our spirits are crushed we are really broken on the inside.  Now there is a huge amount of healing that God wants to do for the crushed spirit but to forgive and to keep on forgiving is the entry point to that.  I don’t think I can go into individual situations.

Sid: You know in your book, I just happen to have a phrase that jumped out at me you said “Even if we forgive someone it doesn’t mean that we trust them; trust has to be earned.”

Peter: Absolutely, forgiveness and trust they’re not the same thing; let me tell you a tragic but not an uncommon story that in a local church where a Sunday School Teacher was found abusing one of the little girls in the Sunday School.  And he was brought to the Minister of the Church with the parents and they forgave him and they had misunderstood this whole issue.  They felt that because they’d forgiven they had to actually give this man his job back.

Sid: Hmm.

Peter:  So they forgave him, put him back in the Sunday School and he abused more children.  You see forgiveness and trust are not the same thing. Forgiveness it deals with our heart; today I actually have to deal with our own heart and you can’t trust somebody who’s not trustworthy.  Jesus Himself didn’t trust himself to people; He was very careful in John 2 verse 24 & 25 it says “He knew what was in people’s hearts therefore he didn’t trust Himself to them.”  He’s very forgiving but there’s a huge difference between forgiving and trusting yourself to people.  And so we need to separate that out and not to let people feel that they have to trust people whom they have forgiven. Somebody might earn that trust and become trustworthy, but it’s not necessarily the case. In Jeremiah 12 verse 6 it says “Your brothers, your own family even they have betrayed you; they’ve raised a loud cry against you do not trust them even though they may even speak well of you.”  See scriptures are very helpful isn’t it in this respect.

Sid: Yes Peter I have to think the biggy for a lot of people involves parents; tell me a little bit about forgiving parents.

Peter: I’ll tell you a story, Karen stood in one of my healing services and she was asking for prayer.  She had a kidney problem and the doctors have said “You got a viral condition on both kidneys and there is nothing we can do for you.”  And they actually said “You have less than 12 months to live.  When she stood before me asking for prayer I was saying “God I don’t know what to pray here I have a heart full of compassion but what do I pray?”  And God spoke it right into my spirit and said “Ask her about her mother?”  And so I asked Karen about her mother and she said “I don’t know anything about my mother.” She was “16 she got pregnant and I was given away for adoption.”  And I spoke to her and I just said “Do you realize that before you were conceived in sexual sin?”  And she laughed and said “I never thought about it that way before.”  But she said “Yeah, that’s true and I said “Have you ever forgiven your parents for sexual sin?”  She said “No, I never even thought about it.”  And I said “Have you ever thanked God that you weren’t aborted?”  She said “No.”  So I want you to do these two things and she did; she spoke out from her heart thanking God for her life and forgave her mother and her father for their sexual sin. As she prayed that prayer something happened on the inside she felt something break in her tummy where she was joined to her mom and as I prayed there was a spirit of cursing that was upon her because the sexual sin of a parents the spirit of infirmity began to leave her and she was delivered of that spirit.  Actually that wasn’t the healing, the healing followed immediately afterward like with the woman in Luke 13 when Jesus delivered her of the spirit of infirmity, then He laid His hands on her that she may be physically healed.  And I asked another lady member of our team to lay hands on Karen’s kidneys and she prayed there in tongues for 20 minutes asking God to just bring healing.  And 20 minutes later all the swelling and the kidney’s had gone down, Karen was able to bend over and to touch her toes which she could never had done before for the  pain was so great.  She wrote to me 6 weeks later and she said “She’d been back to the hospital, the doctors had said they could find no evidence of the viral condition and to forget what they said last time; they told her “You’re okay there’s nothing wrong.”  Now the healing was released in her when she forgave her parents for what they had done.

Sid: What about people that their parents have a particular disease and they have the same let’s take something that’s quite common in our culture arthritis.

Peter:  Oh yeah, yeah.

Sid: Give me an example.

Peter:  Well, arthritis is something that even the medic’s say that there are certain percentage of the people that have arthritis who themselves are bitter. So people who are not the nicest and the most pleasant of characters let’s put it this way.

Sid: Now that’s not true for all.

Peter:  It’s not true for all

Sid: Yes.

Peter: Though there are some who are like that and there is a relinking of the attitude of the heart and the physical condition.  Now there are other forms of arthritis that actually seem to come down the generational line.  One generation after another after another has a similar sort of problem.  There was a lady who asked me for prayer and she had 3 years of degenerative arthritic condition.  Her gifting before God was to actually dance and she used to…

Sid: Well, you can see why the devil wanted that curse passed on.

Peter: Well, she wanted to worship the Lord in dance and she couldn’t because of the arthritis. And I said to her “How long have you had this?  And she said 3 years.  I said “Did your mother have something like this?”  And she said “Yes, my mother was crippled with arthritis.  And I said “How long did your mother die?  She said “Three years ago.”  It was a direct correlation.

Sid: Hmm.

Peter: Acts Chapter 20 and verse 5 says “The sins of the fathers visit on the children to the third and the fourth generation.  And this is a reality that we see sometimes in our working and what has happened in one generation after another and we can break that.  In the Name of Jesus we can ask God to just cut that generation line; and that’s what they did she forgave her ancestors for everything they have done, whatever it was.

Sid: In other words you can forgive even though you don’t know what the specific sin they committed was.

Peter: Nehemiah prays a very interesting prayer, he confessed that “I and my ancestors we have sinned.”  It’s not a case of forgiving for something specific but it’s a confession… the word confess actually means “I agree with.”  I agree that my ancestors have sinned and done ungodly things and I forgive them and I release them into the freedom of my forgiveness. And then we can pray “God will you now cut that chain with Your authority you’ve given us in Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit Lord will you cut that chain.”  And there’s many, many people who have got things that have come down the generation line and they need to just say “God my ancestors have sinned, I agree with that.”

Sid: Now this lady who had arthritis just out of curiosity did you see her dance?

Peter:  Oh, I did twenty minutes later she was up at the front of our meeting hall and she was dancing and she was worshiping the Lord because the arthritis had been healed.

Sid: That fast!

Peter:  That fast, in her case that fast; but sometimes it’s not that fast but in her case that’s exactly what happened.

Sid: So what do you recommend someone does that they have forgiven someone because they know they’re required to by the Bible but there’s a bit deception and every time that person name comes up there is a bad feeling inside.

Peter:  It’s not necessarily a bit of deception, see there are layers of pain and just like an onion has many layers and we can have layers of pain.  And we can forgive; you see the first act of forgiveness is…..

Sid:  So would you call it a process?

Peter: I’d say there’s definitely a process without a doubt because it begins with a choice and let me say this it’s not just a choice because the Bible tells us to.  Because the Bible can tell you lots of things and you do them with a bad heart and doesn’t do a slightest bit of difference.  We’ve actually got to come to the point that actually in my heart I choose to forgive.  I thank God that He chooses to want to forgive me. The story of the prodigal son for example where the father’s arms are wide open, and we actually go to get to that point and saying “God actually I want to forgive.”  And it’s not just because I’m being told to do it; because I want to do it and at that point we can actually begin our process.  And the process can take quite a while because I have a picture that I use to help people understand here.  If you have a bucket of sand and you have a teaspoon and you take out a teaspoonful of sand it doesn’t look as though there is much gone out of the bucket. But you keep on taking a teaspoon out of the bucket and gradually the level of the sand goes down. And you get to the end where there is actually no more sand in the bucket and there is no more pain.  And we need to keep on forgiving until the pain is gone.

Sid: Peter, we’re out of time.