Wednesday

What is Mercy? - A Dose of Encouragement


Last month I wrote about God bringing my attention to a special song to share about His Mercy in the post You're Not Guilty Anymore.


Today I would like to draw some more attention to
God's Mercy.





The obvious thing might be to start by looking at
What Mercy is,

but

I think it is important to focus first on
what it is NOT!



Mercy is not:


A Gift of the Spirit.

Gifts of the Spirit are given to believers.

Mercy is extended to everyone.

Even to the people who have not accepted His Salvation, God has extended His Mercy.
Even to those who never accepted His Salvation, God gave them the chance to receive His Mercy.


A Fruit of the Spirit.

The Fruit of the Spirit is the result in believers of walking in the Spirit of God.

Mercy is not listed as a fruit of the Spirit in the Bible but rather it is one of the attributes of God it is part of His character.

"He is kind and full of mercy; he is patient and keeps his promise. . ."  Joel 2:13

As we grow and the fruit of the Spirit is produced in our lives then we will become more like Jesus and more merciful in our character because all the fruit of the Spirit are expressed when in a merciful character.


Something we can earn.

Mercy is freely given by God, not something we have to (or can) earn by how good we are or how much we do.

There is no grade of person we must be to attain Mercy or be worthy of it.








Mercy is:

God not treating us as we deserve to be treated.

We are so used to being rewarded, commended, praised or punished, rejected, attacked, condemned for our actions and words that we just naturally expect God to react to everything as others do.

But God is God 
and 
He is not like other people.

Even when in the eyes of everyone else we deserve punishment, even when we have broken God's laws, God decides what He will do so

His Mercy is
the act of  
NOT 
meeting out the punishment we really do deserve to get.



Shown in the form of several things.

There are many things that we could list here that would form part of His mercy like love, cleansing, forgiveness, and acceptance.
They are the ways we should recognise His Mercy.

It is like our mother heart for our children, we do not always punish wrong doing, we talk to them in love and explain things to them and show them the right way.
We are actually setting them examples of the type of God's Mercy.

By our mother heart for our children, we can actually be setting them examples of the type of God's Mercy



A Lifter of depression and oppression.

It is God's hand on us.
If He turned away from us when we disobeyed or didn't follow Him then His hand would not be on us and if His hand is not on us then the hand of Satan would be on us.
So each day when God's hand is on us we are receiving His Mercy in keeping the hand of the enemy from us even when we don't realise that is happening.
This means that Satan is hindered from continually oppressing our minds and bringing depression upon us.


Photo Credit: BigStock



MERCY
is

NOT

the receiving 
of the damnation that we are due 


BUT

the
offering
of a 
substitute 
to take 
our 
punishment



Are we like Jonah?

Jonah did not think the Ninevites merited the patience God was showing them and the second chance He was willing to give them because he did not understand what mercy was.

Even though he then disobeyed God and ran in the opposite direction God preserved his life, God showed him mercy.

Jonah did not have a merciful heart toward the people of Ninevah until he himself had fully experienced the mercy of God.


Even if we start out like Jonah we can also learn to recognise God's mercy toward us and in turn be merciful toward others.


Let's thank God for His mercy to us and have mercy for others stamped in our hearts


If you did not listen to the song "Not Guilty Anymore" by Aaron Keyes in the blog post last month then you can listen to it here






Join me for some more thoughts on
When Can I Receive Mercy?
Where, Why, Who of Mercy
The How of Mercy