Lord, do not hold this...
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Lord, do not hold this against them." How could anyone pray such a prayer as one's enemies were about to take your life? Clearly, it is the fact that Stephen was "full of the Holy Spirit" which made such an incredible forgiveness possible.
Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch Christian woman who did so much to protect the Jewish people of her country against the Nazi Holocaust, tells, in several of her books, about speaking in Berlin one day at a Christian meeting when one of the guards from the Nazi concentration camp approached her. She remembered him as having been a particularly savage, cursing guard, who had treated her and her sister Betsy with scorn. The man extended his hand and, with an enthusiastic voice, told Corrie ten Boom how he, too, had accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord, and become a Christian.
Corrie ten Boom said waves of hurt and anger swept over her, and she was at first unable to extend her hand, or even to move. Then she prayed, asking God to take the hurt and the anger away, so in his power, she could acknowledge this former guard as a brother in Christ. Slowly her hand reached out to his, and then, as if a great wall came tumbling down, the former guard and the former prisoner embraced, as healing tears cleansed away the hurt and made them truly one in Christ. Such forgiveness is only p05sible when, like Stephen, we are dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit.
Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch Christian woman who did so much to protect the Jewish people of her country against the Nazi Holocaust, tells, in several of her books, about speaking in Berlin one day at a Christian meeting when one of the guards from the Nazi concentration camp approached her. She remembered him as having been a particularly savage, cursing guard, who had treated her and her sister Betsy with scorn. The man extended his hand and, with an enthusiastic voice, told Corrie ten Boom how he, too, had accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord, and become a Christian.
Corrie ten Boom said waves of hurt and anger swept over her, and she was at first unable to extend her hand, or even to move. Then she prayed, asking God to take the hurt and the anger away, so in his power, she could acknowledge this former guard as a brother in Christ. Slowly her hand reached out to his, and then, as if a great wall came tumbling down, the former guard and the former prisoner embraced, as healing tears cleansed away the hurt and made them truly one in Christ. Such forgiveness is only p05sible when, like Stephen, we are dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit.
