If we remain in (believe in, put our dependency on, rely on, trust in) Jesus and His words remain (obeyed, kept, lived, accepted as truth) in us, we will be able to ask whatever we wish, and it will be given to us. How are we going to obey, keep, live, and accept as truth the words of Jesus? Salvation.

Salvation credits obedience, keeping, living, and accepting as truth the words of Jesus to our account. That then makes it possible for us to ask for obedience, keeping, living, and accepting as truth the words of Jesus into our actual life. This is called the process of sanctification. Salvation takes something like forgiveness and shows it on our record as done. This is a record of grace.

Grace keeps us from having to actually do it in order to get credit for it. Why? So we can have the power of Christ enter into our life, for one thing. However, we still haven’t actually forgiven all the people in our life.

God wants us to use this record of grace as a time period to start forgiving in actuality.

John 15:7 tells us that the record of grace has placed us in a position to start getting our prayers answered. What should we pray for? Sanctification. What is sanctification? It is the process of taking all the things that have been credited to our account and producing them in our lives. We have been credited with forgiveness.

But, as we said before, we haven’t actually forgiven anyone. People still need to see and experience our forgiveness. One of the first prayers we need answered is that we would be able to start forgiving people for the things they have done to us. The true Christian wants to forgive as an act of God’s grace through them to others. Now the true Christian can pray for the power to forgive.