We Must have Grace and Mercy to know God’s Love—R Fritz
To understand God’s love, we need to understand God’s grace and mercy. When all three are put together we get what God calls love. This is not man’s love as nothing we do gets close to what God does, it is beyond our wisdom or understanding. James 3:13-18 says “Who is a wise man and endued (endowed) with knowledge among you? Let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envy and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruit, without partiality, and with hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.” These verses explain what is earthly wisdom and the ways we can see God’s wisdom. It is easy to tell the difference so we can all see as we are speaking with people. In this case it is peace and mercy that come with God’s wisdom.
God’s grace and his mercy equals God’s love. If we do not know what grace and mercy has to do with love how are we going to know God. God is love. It is important to understand God and his ways. God uses himself to show us how he treats us so we know how to treat other people the same way. People forget how God treats us and when somebody else does something that we do not like we treat them with contempt or a lack of respect. That is why we need to know how God through the Holy Spirit treats people. Jesus was the example sent for us to copy using our personality. We do not know love without mercy and grace. Ephesians 2:4-8 says “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And have raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” God loves us and gives us grace and mercy not because we deserve it or because we do not but because of his love.
That same grace and mercy God uses with love should be applied on ourself by us. We are our worst critic when we make mistakes or things do not work out. We need to forgive our self and move on with life giving our sin or mistake to God, asking for forgiveness each day. That will give us the ability to start over each day fresh when we wake up. 1 John 1:9 says “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We feel better when we get things that bother us off our chest.We need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us apply that grace and show us the mercy we need to turn our life around. Love, grace, and mercy are the tools we use when talking to people about God. In other words, we show people how God treats people through how we treat people which draws them closer to you and God. If we are doing it any other way, we will alienate people. This is all applied by the Holy Spirit that lives in us and when we are surrendered is spoken by us.
Our self talk affects how we proceed with our thoughts which are affected by what is going on in our life. Most people are unaware we even have self talk. We need to get the Holy Spirit involved in our self talk because our self talk can become negative. I just found out about self talk when I wrote the last blog. I say self talk but it is really my thought talk that are the self talk because we must understand we are spiritual beings. That thought talk is the same way we talk to God through the Holy Spirit. That is what our prayer life is most of the time. That is why nobody can stop us from praying at any time even when we are at work. I did it all the time as I was a Chaplain at work with myself seeing more people changed and helped, more things God had his hands in than most churches.
What is God’s grace and mercy? Grace is an unmerited favor; it is giving us something we do not deserve. It is the act of God to show us he loves us. That favor is given to us by God when he feels we need some compassion. Grace from God is not something we can expect, it is handed out according to God. God owes us nothing, we owe him. Mercy is us deserving something for our acts we have done but we get something else we were not expecting. Mercy can be explained in we have all sinned and deserve eternal death and could be condemned for eternity but God sent Jesus to take that sentence for us. It is the pardon we get when we choose Jesus and follow him. For those that do not choose him that sentence of eternal death will be pronounced at the white throne judgement. Romans 6:23 says “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
God made man in his image. We have certainly gone our own way forgetting God and his ways. We thought we could have a great life without God. God made us for a purpose but we must choose him and follow him through the Holy Spirit. God has tried to help us see we are better off with him. Grace and mercy are tools God uses to show us how much he loves us. Earth is a testing place to show how much we love God. Where grace and mercy are applied God is and that is where his everlasting love shows. God Bless.
