Mercy Mercy Mercy

 A few weeks ago, I met with a friend, and she dropped a deep revelation on me. We were talking about how the grace and kindness of God should not cause you to want to sin more but should lead you to repentance, causing you to live a holy life. She challenged me with the idea that "it's the Mercy of God that people need to experience.” That got me thinking about mercy. Quite frankly, I have never heard anyone preach about it. Nor have I really heard the term mercy in conversation. If I am honest, I thought it was another term for grace. Man, was I mistaken. Mercy is when you have no other choice but for God to save you. When you have gotten to the end of yourself to the point where it is either death, (emotionally, spiritually, or mentally) or the mercy of God steps in to let you see another day. Experiencing and understanding the mercy of God is what leads to living a holy life.

I think, often, we Christians put so much emphasis on the idea that "grace covers a multitude of sins" instead of understanding the consequences of living in that multitude of sins. Those consequences lead to the need for mercy. Mercy is God's life-saving power; grace is the gift of being able to repent and turn back to God. Grace empowers us to live rightly; Mercy is the understanding that without Christ we would literally be dead. Hebrew 4:16 puts it like this 'So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his MERCY, and we will find GRACE to help us when we need it most.' Paul is showing us the difference between mercy and grace. The dictionary definition of mercy is - compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm; performed out of a desire to relieve suffering, motivated by compassion. Mercy is what we all receive when we become born again. We did not deserve anything other than death, but God so full of mercy saved us. If I am honest, again lol, I think that we, especially modern-day Christians, do not understand how unworthy we actually are. We do not understand how inadequate we are to live this life with the King of Kings. Our human minds have a hard time understanding how much mercy the Lord really gave us, by allowing us to be in his presence and even more so for Him to choose to dwell in us. We have gotten into this grace message in current Christianity, which, yes, there is grace absolutely but, we serve a HOLY GOD! and if we actually have experienced and come to understand His mercy I believe that we would act a whole lot different. We would not misuse and abuse the grace that He so freely gives.

Now, what about grace? You may ask. Where does that fit? Well, as I said above, grace empowers us to live right and gives us the ability to repent (turn from our ways to a new way). The dictionary definition of grace is - courteous goodwill. That means that it is grace, the goodwill of God, that allowed you to receive the mercy of God, that gives you the gifts and talents you possess, and that gives you breath in your lungs each morning. Can you sing? That's the grace of God. Are you funny? That's the grace of God.  Are you administrative? That's the grace of God. Are you alive today? That's the grace of God... I think you get the point. Yes, grace also covers mistakes, but if you understand that the mercy of God comes from a place of TRUE love it would lead you to want to live as holy as you can. Paul describes it like this in Ephesians, "But God, being [so very] rich in mercy, because of His great and wonderful love with which He loves us, even when we were [spiritually] dead and separated from Him because of our sins, He made us [spiritually] alive together with Christ (for by His grace, you have been saved)" (Ephesians 2:4-5). Honestly, as I am writing this and reading this scripture back to myself I realize to understand mercy, you have to understand the measure of His love. Understanding His level of mercy is impossible, without understanding His level of love. 

Sometimes, like in my case, it takes coming to the end of yourself faced with "either I die or, He saves me" to understand His mercy. But for those of y'all who are smarter than I am, hopefully, you will learn from the Word of God and, you will learn from others' experiences so that you don't have to experience the pain of being at the end of yourself. Hopefully, You will allow the revelation of mercy from others to sink in and transform your mind, and then live empowered by grace every day to live as Christ did - holy.