Grace and Mercy

Transcript

Hi Everyone, welcome back to the podcast Living on Prayer. I’m Emily and I’m glad you’re here with me again. Right now our first series in this podcast is focusing on the topic of God’s Love. So for today’s episode, we’re going to bring that focus specifically to the subjects of grace and mercy. And let me just say that speaking of grace and mercy, I can’t help but think of that Cece Winans song called Mercy Said No. It’s such a beautiful song in lyrics and then you add the great Cece Winans’ voice on top of it and I’m a huge Cece Winans’ fan but add her voice to those lyrics and it just makes for an amazing song. It’s an older song, it’s been out a while. But if you haven’t heard it you can find it on YouTube or iTunes or Spotify. It’s called Mercy Said No. Anyway, I love to find songs, song lyrics really, that relate to what I’m going through in my life. I know I’m not the only one who does that but I do it with other things like quotes, scripture references, lines from a tv show or movie, really just words. I like to relate to words and I like to use them as reference points so I’m really glad God gave us the Bible to anchor us as Christians. That’s very helpful to someone like me! And when it comes to these two specific words – grace and mercy, we’ve heard them used together almost as though they are one item or one entity or one saying if you will. But when we truly think about these two words, they are two different and distinct virtues that God created. So that’s what I want to talk about today – grace and mercy.

So why are we talking about grace and mercy specifically? What does it have to do with the topic of God’s love. Well, grace and mercy are manifestations of God’s love. What is a manifestation? Well, by definition (and I mean Merriam-Webster’s definition) manifestation is the act, process, or instance of manifesting or the outward or visible expression of manifesting and by definition manifesting is to make evident or certain by showing or displaying. That means…grace and mercy are ways that God makes His love evident, certain, and shown to us. 

Let’s talk about God’s mercy first because frankly, in my opinion, it’s the better of the two, but again that’s my opinion. Specifically what is God’s mercy? It’s the manifestation, act, display, process, that expression of love that God gave to all of us that we don’t deserve and yet we all received without asking for it. Why? Because God loves all of us. Now I know I am SO undeserving of His love and yet He tells me He loves me constantly. I am humbled by His love and by His outpouring of care for me that at times I have difficulty articulating it. It is truly overwhelming at times when I think that He would create me, have a specific purpose for me, constantly want me, constantly look out for me and protect me and take care of me, and yet I would rebel against Him, think He wouldn’t care about me, turn away from Him, and at some points in my life even talk bad about Him. I can’t put those emotions into words because they overwhelm me. I can tell you that I feel like an idiot. I feel stupid and foolish. I feel like I deserve whatever wrath and punishment He sends my way and yet God isn’t spiteful. He’s merciful and loving and compassionate. The definition of God’s mercy is not giving sinners what they deserve. That’s mercy from God. So honestly, we all deserve God’s wrath. We’ve all sinned and we all continue to sin. We all deserve great punishment for our sins. But thankfully God is so merciful towards us all. The greatest manifestation of God’s mercy for the world though, the one I alluded to a minute ago, the reason I say that mercy is the best manifestation of God’s love, is because his greatest act and display of mercy was sending His only son, Jesus, who was a perfect human…who had committed no sin, no rebellion, who deserved no punishment or wrath from God whatsoever…to take ALL of God’s wrath for the world, for the whole world, past, present, and future, ALL OF US, and sent him to die the cruelest, most inhumane death for all the world to witness and record so that we don’t have to suffer the consequences of our sins if we don’t choose to. That was God’s greatest display of mercy. He said to the world, you don’t have to take my wrath for your sins. Hell isn’t going to be your punishment for your rebellion, your sins, your wickedness. My son will be the sacrifice for all of you. If you come to me through Him, I will accept you. God sacrificed His son so that we don’t have to die like that. So that we don’t have to sacrifice ourselves or anything else like that for our sins. It’s the greatest manifestation of God’s mercy there could ever be! We just have to accept it. How amazing is that?

So let me give you some human examples of mercy before we move on to the topic of grace. So first of all, have you heard the saying “throwing yourself on the mercy of the court”? Most of us know that is when someone is in trouble with the law and has landed in front of a judge and is awaiting a judgement or sentencing of some sort. That person is at the mercy of the court to decide how to punish them and they are hoping the court will go easy or easier on them because they took ownership for their action. The court could give them mercy by giving them a lighter sentence then they deserve because they took ownership for their actions and are supposedly remorseful. Another human example of mercy is if you’ve ever watched kids played together or remember being a kid once yourself and when they’re in a play fight or tussle of some sort one of them might yell out something like “uncle” or “give” or “ok you win” and the other one will let the kid go of whatever entanglement they are in at the time. That’s mercy. It might be that the kid really just wants to win or doesn’t want to consequences of getting in trouble if they actually hurt the other kid but in reality it was mercy. They were fighting, yes a play fight, and they were fighting to win and it could have gone further but it didn’t. In contrast to the kid play fight, if those fighters were just two people on a street corner and one was trying to rob the other or they were fighting over money or food or drugs, would there be as much mercy or mercy at all in that fight? Just wanting to show some contrast and difference of mercy. Fighting in a backyard or playroom with discipline and friendship and boundaries, there typically is mercy. Fighting on the street without rules and boundaries there might not be mercy. Again, just another human example of mercy. So hopefully mercy is a bit more understandable from the human perspective. 

 I do want to read a couple of scripture references on mercy to help guide us as well. First from Luke, Chapter 6, Verse 36 “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” And also from James Chapter 2, Verse 13 “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”

Now what’s the difference between God’s mercy and God’s grace? Because so many times we hear these terms interchangeably or together. Well, they do go together sometimes but they are not the same. As we just discussed, God’s mercy is when he doesn’t give sinners what they deserve. But God’s grace is blessing us when it’s undeserved, showing us favor when we don’t deserve it. Man, I just can’t even thank him enough for this one either. So if God’s mercy is not punishing us as we deserve to be punished then in contrast to that, God’s grace is providing us blessings and favor when we don’t deserve blessings and favor. So yes, God does both. He saves us from punishment we deserve and he provides favor we don’t deserve it. That’s a wonderful Heavenly father, a truly awesome God that loves us! And incase you weren’t aware, the best display of God’s grace is that God made heaven available to all of us through His son Jesus’ sacrifice. It’s undeserving, we don’t deserve heaven. We are all sinners. We were all born into sin, we all sin daily and should have to sacrifice and suffer God’s wrath for being unholy to Him. But again, He has mercy on us. He had mercy on His people centuries ago when He sent us Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice to end the suffering once and for all, to end the sacrifices and the doom of hell for each of us that we are born in to and then He took it a step further and He graced us with His son Jesus and told us that He would accept us if we enter into heaven through His son Jesus. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life." That is the ultimate display, act, manifestation of grace! We are so undeserving of heaven. None of us deserve it. We are not entitled to it. We are not born into it. We did not inherit it. If anything, we are born into sin. Our ancestors sinned and we sin. We are born into sin. We are not God or Jesus, none of us are. So the only way we can get to be accepted into God and Jesus family, get to die and be part of their estate and pulled into their kingdom, is to believe in Jesus and ask Him into our hearts, have a relationship with him, be a part of his family. That’s it! God made it easy for us to do it but we aren’t entitled to it just by being born folks. I love the mentality of some people nowadays that think we just get stuff by showing up but it doesn’t work that way with God. We have to take action. He will do the heavy lifting, I promise you! He really will. But He does require us to act in every situation. We can’t just sit by and do nothing and wait for God to do it all. He gave us free will and it’s on us to use it. We must accept Christ. We must pray. We must have faith in Him. Those are actions. He still requires us to talk to Him daily, know Him, tell Him what’s going on and ask Him for help and thank Him for our blessings. Actions people, actions to get favor. And God’s grace is favor and blessings we don’t deserve. Ephesians 2:8 "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." 

So let’s talk about human examples of grace because grace can be manifested in a number of ways so that we can be more Christ-like. Showing grace with our words, our actions, in just our presence alone. Words we say about people and words we say to them can show favor and bless them even when they don’t deserve it. We can even choose to accept criticism or defeat with grace even if it hurts us which can allow God to shine through us to others, even to the one who is criticizing us or defeating us. We can show grace with our actions such as providing our time, our money, our efforts and energy towards others that need it or can’t do it without us. Things like our local charities and churches and fundraisers, our elderly neighbors, that delivery driver who we stop and hold the door open for. Yes, it’s their job to deliver the packages and they have to figure out how to get that door open and yes we have other things to do but grace is showing the delivery driver favor and blessing them with our time and effort, helping them for those few seconds or a minute to do their job. Grace is giving that homeless person on the street a bottle of water on a hot day. Yes, they will likely figure out how to quench their thirst some other way and yes we have other things to do with our time and money. But grace is helping them quench their thirst in the heat of the day. Grace doesn’t ask questions. It doesn’t judge people or put conditions on love. Grace just blesses and favors. Grace is a manifestation of love. And we should be so thankful that God loves us enough that he is gracious all the time and that he continues to grace us, to favor us, to bless us. We should constantly thank Him for our blessings and favor. We should constantly thank Him knowing He will continue to be gracious to us even though we are undeserving. And we should continue to do unto others what He does to us.

Now don’t sit there and think that I’m above you or anyone else and I’m some righteous and holier than thou person because I’m not. I don’t claim to be. I’m just trying to be better than I was yesterday and to keep favor with God every day and I will continue to do that until I leave this earth. I guess for me I think of my service with God like doing yoga. If you’ve ever done yoga then you understand the analogy, it’s just you against you every time you step into the studio. And it’s you every day. You are only trying to be better than you were the last time you were in the studio. I’m not comparing myself to anyone else. It’s just me trying to better me and sometimes I get injured and have to take a step back and go back down to the beginner poses or stretch longer in one pose but I will still show up and keep going. That’s how I am as a Christian with God. I’m trying everyday to get better but I have setbacks every now and then but most of the time I’m in the studio just trying to do better than the day before, not worrying about anyone else that’s there and what they’re doing. Just cheering everyone else on and congratulating them on their success as we are all moving through our own walks with God and I hope you do the same. And if my practice can help anyone along the way then even better. And I hope you look at your practice in a similar way because we’re all in an individual relationship with God here and we all have a unique purpose that He created us for and hopefully we can help each other and encourage each other along our individual paths.

Anyway, I hope today’s talk helped provide some understanding on God’s mercy and grace. I really hope you leave here with an appreciation for how God blesses us through his grace and mercy. And as always I want to remind each one of you that God loves you specifically. He made you for a purpose and He knows you and wants to have an intimate relationship with you and genuinely looks forward to hearing from you so I hope you’ll reach out to Him, talk to Him, pray to Him, thank Him, tell Him how everything is going in your life, and tell Him I said hi! 

Now in closing let me send us off with a prayer from 2 Thessalonians, Chapter 2, Verses 16 & 17 “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal comfort and a wonderful home, comfort you and strengthen you in every good thing you do and say.”

Thanks for joining everyone, please be safe, we’ll talk again soon.