What About Mercy?
As God NEVER ceases to do; He managed to totally amaze me again this morning with the perfect timing of Joyce Meyer’s TV broadcast message today, A Merciful and Forgiving Attitude! Just as incredible as I know this will be to at least four of the FAM Fellowship members I talked to yesterday (and then even more today!), I hope they will be equally blessed just to know that God cares and is so intimately involved in their lives that He timed a message like this to perfectly confirm and reinforce the very same things we talked about yesterday! It’s also a perfect follow up to a recent FAM Chat, in which the concept of forgetting being a requirement for forgiveness was difficult for some to fully grasp and understand. But it’s a wonderful message for ALL of us, and something we can’t ever hear too much about, because the need to forgive and give mercy will ALWAYS be an integral part of our lives as Christians; most especially as we stand for the restoration of our marriages and even after marriage restoration, if not even more so.
While it is not all that unusual to hear messages or talk about forgiveness, listening to Joyce’s message this morning, I realized that one thing we OFTEN overlook is mercy, because true forgiveness is not possible without mercy. And Joyce really makes the point that it’s not possible for us to GIVE mercy unless we first RECEIVE God’s mercy ourselves! And one of the greatest (and usually first) challenges when someone new comes to the ministry is getting them to stop focusing so much on the sin and wrong doing of their spouses long enough to recognize their own. But then that sometimes causes people to feel such a great sense of condemnation and responsibility for the damage THEY have done to their marriage that they have to learn to accept God’s mercy and forgiveness for themselves, which is often not as easy or simple as it may seem.
Several times over the past few days, the Lord has brought Luke 7:47 to my mind, but I couldn’t quite figure out why, and now it makes a lot more sense. I was more focused on the correlation between forgiveness and love, or the lack thereof, which is still very important for all of us to understand, but the point I think the Lord wanted me to focus on is the mercy given and received in the story portrayed in Luke 7:44-47, which says:
Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
As this story so powerfully illustrates, something truly significant takes place and a very strong bond of love is formed through the act of giving and receiving mercy, and many of the restored marriage testimonies we love bear that out as well. So it’s important to understand mercy in terms of forgiveness and giving our spouses a clean slate, just as God gives us.
And since the Bible tells us to have mercy on others as God has mercy on us, the following verses are very helpful in terms of learning to understand mercy from His perspective:
Micah 7:18
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.
Psalm 51:1
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
Hosea 6:6
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
Micah 6:8
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Matthew 5:7
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Matthew 9:13
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Romans 11:30-32
Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.
James 2:12-13
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!
James 3:16-18
For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.
2 John 1:2-3
because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.
Joyce’s “talk show” format programs are not usually my favorites, because I enjoy her preaching so much, but tomorrow’s program, The Freedom of Forgiving, has a lot of great information to, so I encourage everyone to watch that as well. These are very important messages for all of us as we stand for the restoration of our marriages and families; striving to be more Christ-like, which by the very nature of our Lord and Savior must include the ability to give and receive mercy and forgiveness. So listen to them and be blessed and encouraged!