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"THE NEED FOR FAITH TO FORGIVE OTHERS." "And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith." (Luke 17:5)"Increase our faith." Now that's a wonderful request, isn't it? Is that desire of your heart? Wouldn't you like to have your faith ever increasing? God is not pleased when we try to get along in life without faith (Hebrews 11:6). Therefore, it's easy to come to the conclusion then that faith pleases God. Oh yes Lord, "Increase our faith"...."Increase our faith" indeed.But at the same time, I find it rather interesting here in this chapter that the apostles asked Jesus to "Increase our faith" AFTER He had spoken on forgiveness in the 4 preceding verses. Hmm, that is interesting, isn't it?Now these men had seen the Lord perform many miracles, yet we never see them asking for an increase in faith concerning those mighty works. They had heard Him, they had seen Him, and beheld all that Jesus had accomplished. John reminds us in 1 John 1:1, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life."The apostles weren't asking for increased faith to believe the miracles. No no. I believe, as the text shows us, that they were asking the Lord to increase their faith to walk in the Spirit of love and forgiveness with each other. And folks, no matter how you slice it, THAT TAKES A WHOLE LOT OF FAITH ON OUR PART. Each of us need Heaven's help to forgive those who have done ill will to us. I dare say it takes more faith on our part to forgive someone who has done wrong to us than it does to believe what Jesus has wrought for us.When we're living in the light of Colossians 3:13, we can love and forgive others because we know that He loved and forgave us. I don't know if anyone else is with me on this, but I've always believed that the one who loves the most is always the first one to show forgiveness. Wasn't that the way of our Saviour? John told us, "We love him, because he FIRST loved us." (1 John 4:19) (caps mine)The Lord Jesus loves to forgive and when we confess our sins, He can always be counted on to forgive us. Why? Because He's faithful!! (1 John 1:9)Friends, do you know someone right now that you need to forgive? Then let's be faithful and ask the Lord to "INCREASE OUR FAITH." On the authority of the Scriptures, He'll do it. You know why? Because when we forgive one another, we're walking in that same Spirit of love and forgiveness just like Jesus did then and does today.