Mercy

I've never done this before, that I'm aware of. I've never blogged about a sermon at church, I don't think. We have a new senior pastor, just a month in. God is using him so greatly in our midst. He is honestly what we'd been praying for. I feared the change. I will be honest. My fears were that our current senior pastor would never be able to be replaced. (His wife is experiencing the onset of Alzheimer's and he needed to back down his responsibilities a bit.) He was our pastor for 30+ years, and although I've only attended here for about eight years, I had come to love his pastoring - his love for Christ, for His people, for the Word, and how the Holy Spirit would fill him and he would teach us what God would have us know. How do you replace that? Well, you can't. In fact, he is still very much involved in the church and will always be. For that I am so grateful. However, our new pastor is exactly who I would have hoped God would send. Very much the man we needed. God is working amazing things for us through him, and I am so thankful for him.

This week God gave him the topic of "Mercy". It's the fifth key element in a series he is teaching on "Key's to the Kingdom". Keys 1-4 are Poverity of Spirit, Mourning (as in our sin; vs management of sin), Meekness (yielding to God/obedience), and and Appetite for Righteousness (Jesus in control). So the fifth is now Mercy. I wanted to share what God taught me today about Mercy:

Mercy is not empathy. It's not "rooting for the underdog", or feeling sorry for someone. Mercy is ACTION. He gave a quote by Dr. Kent Hughes that I love: "Mercy exists when something is done to alleviate distress." Isn't that awesome? The motivation of mercy, he went on to describe, is both mathmatical and divine. First, YOU + MERCY = MERCY...however, YOU - MERCY = NO MERCY. Yikes. This was based on James 2:13, by the way. You'll have to look it up so I can save time and space. (Just kidding, I'm just wanting you to crack a Bible open...hee hee, because I'm crafty like that.) You can't give mercy if you've never received it, and you can't receive mercy if you've never given it. Secondly, the "divine" motivation (see Ephesians 2:4, Titus 3:5,6, and Lamentations 3:22.

Our pastor then discussed the need for us to recognize and realize we need mercy, in order to receive it and give it. He said to confess our need for and lack of mercy, then begin practicing it. As a mental picture of us needing mercy, he gave a very heartbreaking but vivid description of a photo taken after the Indonesia tsunami. It was of a father holding the lifeless body of his son. The look on his face was pure anguish. It was the look of, "I would give my OWN LIFE to bring life back to this child." The relationship he gave is this: we are the child, Christ is the dad. We are lifeless without Jesus, receiving no mercy and giving no mercy...but Christ holds us and weeps and says "I GAVE my own life to bring life back to these people". We need mercy. We need mercy so that we can show mercy to others and BE the ACTION of mercy. He then challenged us with the following:

At the end of every day this week, write down on a piece of paper every sin you have committed throughout that day. On Saturday, sit with that paper alone in a room, and read off every single occurrence. Every single sin, word for word. Then, at the end say "against YOU, Lord". Then confess those sins and ask for FORGIVENESS. Finally, when you are finished, crumple up the paper and get rid of it. Tear it up, destroy it. Our sins are washed clean by the blood of Jesus and they are no more. That's mercy. If this doesn't make you realize how badly you need God's mercy, I don't know what will. I'm going to take the challenge and do it. In fact, I'm going to write my list for today right now. It won't be easy, but I am going to do it. I need mercy.

I'm going to try to link to a blog I follow of a woman by the name of Kristen. She has started a home for pregnant women in Africa called "Mercy House". I love her blog and I love what she is doing for the Kingdom and for God's people. She is who I think of when I think of the statement about "mercy is action". Mercy House is action. It is "alleviat(ing) distress" in these girls/women. Please take a look at her blog (I'm going to have to give it to you this way, I can't figure out how to link it...duh.) Her blog site is www(dot)wearethatfamily(dot).com.