Today is Mother’s day and the most appropriate spiritual gift to talk about is that of showing mercy. Whether it’s a skinned knee or a broken heart mothers are the ones we usually turn to for compassion and love. However, there are just as many men who have the heart gift of showing mercy as there are women. In fact, of all 7 of the motivational spiritual gifts, mercy is the most distributed. One particular group of believers who teach discovering your spiritual gift from this perspective, in their survey indicated that in the distribution of gifts 30% make up the gift of compassion as they refer to it most frequently. So that would mean that 30% of the Body of Christ are compassion people who have the gift of showing mercy.
What we’re in the midst of is a series of sermons on discovering your Motivational Spiritual Gift. As 1 Peter 4:10 says, “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” I believe every believer has been given one particular motivational spiritual gift or heart gift as Charles Wise refers to it. Your spiritual gift is a supernatural desire, a drive and a motivation out of which you allow the life of Christ to minister to other people. It’s 1 of 7 gifts that God has built into you and gives your life meaning and purpose. It’s what shapes your personality. It’s who you are in Christ. It’s your heart!
So today it’s my prayer that as we look at the gift of showing mercy that you will be open to and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to you if this is your motivational spiritual gift or if it’s another to be revealed in the coming weeks. So let’s look at:
I. The Characteristics of the Gift of Mercy
The meaning behind the word mercy in a negative sense is to hold back what a person rightly deserves. In a positive sense, it’s to be understanding, compassionate and loving – to have pity on, to be compassionate by word or deed and specifically by divine grace. So one who has the grace gift of mercy has:
1. An Ability to sense joy or distress
The person with the gift of mercy is always going to be reaching out to help someone else emotionally. They have the ability to sense or feel the atmosphere of joy or distress where there’s misery, pain, suffering, grief or tribulation. This kind of person has a discerning spirit that’s able to distinguish in a group or an individual what’s going on emotionally. They have a sharp, sensitive awareness of someone else’s needs. That ability to be understanding has an attraction in itself. Mom’s, do you ever wonder why your teenage daughter likes a certain guy and you wish she‘d never look at him again? You don’t like the way he looks, dresses, or anything else about him and you think he needs a real mother and a real father! Your daughter has the gift of mercy and is attracted to him – he talks about his needs and all these problems he has in his life & he needs this & he needs that and the more he pours out – she just melts under that, she’s attracted to someone like that and the reason is, she has the gift of mercy. Or people are drawn to you, it’s like you’ve got written across your forehead – “Share all of your problems, your life story with me” and you listen for an hour and ½ in Walmart when this person is attracted to you and you’re available to meet their emotional needs. You make it easy for people to confide in you, you sense people’s hurt and share the pain with them. Of course, you have to be careful because sometimes people can take advantage of your sensitive nature. You not only sense the joy and distress but secondly you have:
2. A Desire to remove hurts and bring healing
A person with the gift of mercy always wants to remove hurt feelings. They say, “Yes, I know exactly what you mean.” Now, the person sharing may be dead wrong, but the person with mercy isn’t trying to defend or correct, but heal a broken heart or a broken spirit or a hurt spirit. A mercy heart is more interested in healing than in teaching some spiritual lesson that another gift may be interested in. They’ll have more concern for mental distress than physical distress. Last week we talked about the gift of serving and the server heart is more interested in meeting physical needs while the mercy heart is more interested in meeting mental and emotional needs. The person with mercy will be more interested in a person’s emotional upheaval and their inner struggles than maybe some physical things.
3. Avoids firmness unless felt beneficial
A person with the gift of mercy will avoid seeking to be very firm and will be tender, sometimes to the point of agreeing or not wanting to hurt anybody’s feelings or whatever it takes to heal and satisfy the emotional need of the moment. That’s good sometimes and sometimes a need demands firmness. Of course, this avoidance of firmness can appear as weakness or indecisiveness. But mercy is meekness not weakness.
4. Sensitive to hurtful words and actions
A mercy heart will pop up and say, “you really shouldn’t say that! Do you think that was kind?” Haven’t you been in a conversation when you thought everybody was in agreement and you said something that was a little sharp and someone said, “Now, I don’t really think that was kind.” And you just felt it kinda twist off in you! Well, that mercy person was just reacting normally because when you spoke against someone else they literally felt the hurt. A mercy heart senses words and actions that will hurt another person and it actually hurts them. All of us are that way to an extent. For example, when you hear another man talk about his mother in a derogatory way you feel that deep down inside. Or a young lady talk about her “ole man,” you feel that deep down inside. When I hear someone criticize another pastor I feel that deeply and it hurts. But a person with the gift of mercy takes that like a ton of steel and they feel the hurt and they can weep over someone else’s hurt – they can feel it because they have such empathy. They empathize with hurting people.
5. An Ability to discern sincere motives
The mercy heart is going to be completely poured out. There’s a discernment they know when they’re meeting a need and when they’re not, because of the sensitivity of their spirit. Now, it’s extremely important to have a sensitive spirit, but is it not true that the more sensitive a spirit is – sometimes the more easily you can be hurt. At the same time, the more sensitive a spirit is, the easier it is for God to reach that person and deal with that person giving you revelation of His will and spiritual guidance. But like-wise, the easier it is for that person to make a mistake or be impulsive. That’s a mercy heart. A person with the gift of mercy feels:
6. Unity with those sensitive to others
A mercy heart feels a oneness with those who are sensitive to the needs and feelings of other people. When a person with the gift of mercy is in a group of people who likewise care, there’s that sense of unity, joy and love that’s there. But you put them in a group of people that don’t feel the same way and there’s static, there’s a tension and stress. A mercy heart is always reaching out and loving people who need to be loved. In fact, there’s a real need for deep friendships and loyalty to those friends. Of all the gifts this is the one with the greatest capacity, ability and sensitivity to feel and give genuine love. But because of that, this person has a greater vulnerability to deeper and more frequent hurts from people who fail to demonstrate sincere love. The apostle John is probably the person who personifies the gift of mercy more than any other in Scripture. When you think about the gospel of John and the epistles, John used the word “love” more than any other disciple. John’s teachings and personal relationships illustrate that his primary focus was on love and unity.
A mercy heart has a need for deep friendships. John had a very close relationship with Jesus and with Peter. In fact, John often refers to himself as the disciple “whom Jesus loved.” A person with the gift of mercy will demonstrate love and loyalty to a friend even by reacting harshly toward those who attack or reject or criticize their friend. You remember, when the Samaritans rejected Jesus, John was the one who wanted to call down fire from heaven on them.
7. Closing of the spirit to the insincere
A person with the gift of mercy will close their spirit to those who are insincere or insensitive. This person detects insincerity and what happens is – it’s not that they become less merciful or tender, they just sort of close their spirit and they don’t vibrate and express genuinely what’s on the inside when they find themselves in the midst of a situation where there’s insincerity that’s so easily picked up by their sensitive spirit. They are always wanting to give out, to give of themselves to someone in need. When their spirit reaches an antagonistic spirit, it’s like throwing up a red flag, they’re able to understand and detect it and they’ll close their spirit to the insensitivity or insincerity.
II. The Calling of the Gift of Mercy
As 1 Peter 4:10 says, “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” The reason you have a spiritual gift is to minister to people in the Body of Christ and beyond. You have a gift to help people grow up on their spiritual lives, to build up the Body of Christ, to perfect it, to minister to the members of the Body. 1 Corinthians 12:7 makes that abundantly clear, “the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit withal.”
God hasn’t given you a spiritual gift to make you feel good or to feel important or special or spiritually superior. He’s gifted every born again believer in order to be of service and ministry to the Body of Christ and the Kingdom of God. Just this week within an hour’s time God sent 2 different people to say to me there is a need for HELP! One said I need an army of server hearts to help me serve. I sensed the other expressing the need for mercy hearts to help meet needs. I’m hearing our church, the Body needs “A Ministry of Helps.” What are you hearing the Spirit say to our church? Are you hearing the Holy Spirit say to you, “this is who you are, you’re a Mercy heart, this is your gift?”
