God Is Merciful
Robert F Collins
When I grew up in the church, I remember having a basic understanding of what Christians believe and what I thought Christianity is all about: basically, that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for us, and that he rose from the dead. But I did not understand what that meant for me. Why did I need a Saviour, and what was the point of the gospel in my life? I think many people today face this same type of disconnect. Some may even have a greater difficulty approaching God because of how they view him. When they think of God, they think of a distant super being that is not relevant to their lives or even a harsh God of judgment and wrath. But the very foundation of the gospel is just the opposite. We have a merciful, loving Father who wants to be close to us and be involved in every area of our lives. That is why Jesus came: to rescue us and bring us back to God. Life as a follower of Christ is not a religion but a relationship. Most of us need to lose our religion to gain a real relationship with God through Jesus Christ. That begins by knowing who God is, what he is really like. He is not the harsh, judgmental God who is out there somewhere. God loves you as an individual; he cares deeply about you and wants the best for you. God is merciful.
1. Perfect Love
The Bible says we were created for God’s glory (Isa. 43:6, 7). For many people, the word glory can sound kind of mystical. But all it really means is that God created us, that he loves us, and that he designed us to honour him with our lives. We should live our lives in such a way that we reflect God’s worth and value to us. He doesn’t need us to glorify him because he is on some ego trip. He is not like man in that respect. God is God. He is just fine all by himself. He is the all-sufficient one and does not need anyone or anything to add to his perfection. He is already perfect, awesome, amazing, and omniscient. God wants us to glorify him because of what it does for us. By experiencing all the wonderful aspects of who he is, we can enjoy a taste of eternity and his eternal attributes right here on this earth and in our everyday lives. He wants to have a relationship with us so he can show us the plan and purpose he has for our lives, one that will give true happiness and satisfaction. When we surrender our lives to Jesus Christ and glorify God, we become happy and fulfilled. It is that simple.
Most people spend their whole lives searching for fulfilment and happiness but never find it. Without God, everyone feels an emptiness they long to fill, not realizing that only God can meet this deepest need. This is why people do crazy, selfish things and end up hurting themselves and each another. They are trying to find happiness in things that cannot satisfy. True happiness is realized only when a person lives for God’s glory, not for himself. Before I came to Jesus, I was all about feeling good. I tried everything possible to make me feel good, but it never lasted. I did all kinds of crazy things, trying to fill the void inside myself, but those paths always led back to emptiness. Before I was willing to surrender my life to Jesus, I had questions about whether God could truly make me happy. I mean, of course I also wanted to go to heaven. I knew that was part of the package deal, and I certainly didn’t want to go to hell! But what I really wanted to know was if Jesus could make me feel good. Could I really be fulfilled? Could Jesus make me happy while I was on this earth? Happiness was my quest. And if we dig down deep into our own hearts and are honest with ourselves, we all want happiness. We pursue happiness every day. It is the way God designed us. It is one of our deepest desires, and I wanted to know if God could truly make me happy. When I looked at Christians, they just seemed boring! Compared with what I was doing, they never seemed like they were having fun. They were never out doing drugs, getting wasted, sleeping around and all of the things I considered normal. So to me it looked like they weren’t having any fun, but of course I was just looking at them from the outside. I didn’t understand what was going on inside of them. I didn’t understand what happens when you begin to feel Jesus and experience God. When we accept God’s mercy and forgiveness, we begin to value God. The reality sets in that we were headed to hell, but now we are headed to heaven. As we feel how much Jesus loves us, we can hardly believe it. We feel joy, peace, even excitement. We begin to walk in the reality of the mercy of God, and it satisfies our souls.
2. Trying to be Happy
Before I knew Christ, the things I did to make myself happy had to come from the outside. I didn’t realize that all those things I was doing could never make me truly happy. But when I received Christ, his Holy Spirit began to change me from the inside out. I suddenly started feeling great because the longing we all feel is actually a longing of the soul that only Jesus can fulfil. I could hardly believe that I was truly happy. That is what the Bible means when it says that he gives you new strength, new peace, and new joy. God gives you good feelings that last, feelings that build you up, feelings that satisfy you. The closer we get to God, the more joy we feel, the more we discover his presence, and the more excited we get about heaven and eternity. As humans, no matter how much we try in our own strength, we will always fall short of glorifying God the way we should, the way we were made to (Rom. 3:23). That’s because deep inside of us is an inclination to do things we know are wrong. The Bible calls it sin. People don’t like to talk about sin and sometimes have a hard time believing humans are born with that kind of nature. They want to believe that deep down inside we are all pretty good. And that is the problem. We are pretty good, but sin keeps us from being good enough, and that is why we need Jesus. Pretty good is not enough, and if you look around you and then closely at yourself, you will begin to understand sin. Or to put it another way, if we are all basically good people, why is the world in such bad shape? Think of sin as not glorifying God as you should. As a result of our sin separating us from God, all of us are subject to eternal condemnation. We need forgiveness, and we need to be saved from our sinful and condemned state. We need for the separation thing to be fixed, and we need a new nature that empowers us to live for God and allows us to experience him. The only way that can happen is through Jesus, allowing him into your life as your Saviour. When he died on the cross, he actually took your punishment for your sins, so when God looks at you, he sees the innocence of Jesus and pours his mercy over you. This is the good news of the gospel: Jesus died for you. He paid the price for your sins. By believing this truth for your life, you are no longer separated from God. We call it salvation, and it brings us total forgiveness and gives us a fresh start in life. Eternal life, complete forgiveness, and the innumerable benefits of salvation are given freely to those who repent and put their trust in Jesus Christ. God does not want us to just learn about him. That is head knowledge. That is religion. God wants us to experience him and have a relationship with him. As Christians, when we begin to trust and believe in Jesus, we receive the Holy Spirit, who comes to dwell on the inside of us. When God gives us his Spirit, we can actually feel him working in our lives. We become who we always wanted to be, free and fully satisfied. Everyone likes to feel good. But true satisfaction that lasts can come only from experiencing God.
Have you ever made a boneheaded, what-in-the-world-was-I thinking kind of mistake? We’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all done things we regret. We’ve all thought, I wish I hadn’t done that. You probably can easily think of people you have wronged or people who have hurt you. Life has a way of stacking on the pain. But God’s mercy brings us forgiveness that frees us up for a fresh start in him. Regardless of who you are, what you have done, or where you have been, God wants to pour out his mercy on you. The Bible uses words like abundant, everlasting, and overflowing to describe his mercy. If a person is convicted of a crime, there is a slight chance he will face a kind judge who will show him a little mercy. Maybe reduce his sentence by a few years. That is not a lot of mercy. It is a little mercy, and the truth is, when it comes to humans, mercy is hard to come by. Not so with God. His mercy is like a huge bucket of water filled to the rim so that if you bumped into it, it would spill all over you. His mercy is so great that he does not just forgive us when we fail, but He erases any record of our failure. He doesn’t just reduce our sentence, eternal punishment. He eliminates it and sets us free.
3. Infinite Mercy
My favourite description of just how abundant God’s mercy is comes in Psalm 103:11: For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him (NKJV). The sun is 93 million miles from the earth. That’s millions of miles, but it does not stop there. The next closest star to the earth, besides the sun, is 24 billion miles away. So think about it: God compares how high or how far the heavens are above the earth to his mercy. Twenty-four billion miles of mercy is a lot of mercy! Do you know that if you were to travel at the speed of light, it would take you about fifteen days to get there? A light year is the distance you could travel in one year, going 186,000 miles per second. That is almost six trillion miles in a year! Our minds can hardly even comprehend how far that is, yet this is what God chooses to describe the measure of his mercy. Just think: 15,000 miles of distance around the earth, 250,000 miles to the moon, 93 million miles to the sun, and 24 billion miles to the next nearest star. And yet God says as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his mercy. If that is not enough to blow your mind, let us take it even farther. Scientists recently found the farthest galaxy that they can see. They believe that galaxy is just the beginning of billions and billions more galaxies beyond it. The name of that galaxy is simply a number: A1689-ZD1. It is so high above the earth that its hard to even explain. If you travelled at the speed of light and remember, that is six trillion miles a year it would take you 13 billion years to get there, to a galaxy that could be the beginning of billions more! And yet God has even more mercy for you than that.
Conclusion
Maybe you have made mistakes. Maybe you have tried filling that emptiness with other things like I did and you still are not satisfied. Maybe you have lost hope for the future because try as you might, you cannot be the person you want to be. God wants to give you a fresh start.
There is no sin or mistake that God’s mercy cannot cover. You cannot use it up. Ever! It’s His very nature.
God is merciful.
