5 Truths from Sabbatical - Mercy
There are five key themes that the Lord ministered to me over and over while on sabbatical. The first is mercy.
During sabbatical, I experienced some incredible highs and some difficult lows. The highs included a week-long tour in Israel that the Lord paid for in a surprising and supernatural way! We were also able to buy a house that we had been looking at for two years (amazing stories for another time). The lows included difficult moments of spiritual warfare and processing emotional pain absorbed over 27 years of ministry. In those moments when the ground beneath me seemed to be slipping away the Lord met me with revelation of His nature that overcame the darkness that was crowding my heart (Psalm 18:36).
Exodus 34:6 And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth,
When Moses asked God, “Show me Your Glory!” God responded by declaring His name to Moses. In declaring His name, God was declaring His glory in the sense He was declaring the depths of His nature. The very first attribute of His nature He declared was mercy. This is a massive truth. The first inclination of God’s heart is always mercy.
Let me ask you a question: Do you see Him this way? Do you believe that He acts this way toward you?
There is a huge difference between someone who occasionally acts merciful and someone who is mercy itself. Mercy isn’t just something He does, it’s who He is. We experience Him as showing mercy, but the truth is He can’t be anything different than Himself. God is merciful because God is mercy.
Consider David’s words in Psalm 119:132, “Look upon me and be merciful to me, As Your custom is toward those who love Your name.”
It is His custom or manner to always be merciful. What a profoundly beautiful truth! Not only is mercy the leading attribute of His nature, but it’s also the leading action of His will. This understanding led David to say, “The LORD is good to all, And His tender mercies are over all His works (Psalm 145:9). His mercy is upon and available to everyone He has created. The NIV says, “He has compassion on all He has made”.
I have preached and taught on the riches of God’s mercy many times over the years but during sabbatical these truths were essential for me to process through the difficult moments I faced. Believing that He is merciful enabled me, in the middle of my mess, to come right to Him and ask Him to meet me. I’m grateful that He is mercy, if He weren’t He wouldn’t have any desire to meet with one as weak and needy as me.
There were a few key takeaways for me about God’s mercy:
Revelation of God’s mercy births great gratitude in our heart towards God.
Revelation of God’s mercy towards us rid us of a self-righteous attitude toward others.
Revelation of God’s mercy compels us to be merciful towards others in the same way God is merciful toward us.
Because God is merciful, God is safe. Since God is safe, we are never at risk when we trust Him. Faith is ultimately never a risk.
That last takeaway, God is merciful, therefore God is safe was a powerful and important truth for me. It allowed me to experience a measure of freedom that I didn’t know I needed. Do you believe He is safe? Do you feel like you can come to Him however you are and He will meet you with compassionate mercy and kindness? If that is a difficulty for you I encourage you to spend some time with the verses I mentioned and prayerfully ask the Lord to reveal Himself to you. We must know Him as merciful so that we can confidently come to Him through all our challenges, weaknesses, and failures.
I’ll end with this verse from Hebrews:
Hebrews 4:15-16 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for He faced all of the same testings we do, yet He did not sin. [16] 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. (NLT)