Tag: mercy

We all mess up and do what we don’t want to do. We don’t understand why but it’s something every human experiences. We can’t fully understand ourselves and our motivations. As much as psychology tries to explain the reasons behind why people do what they do, it misses the fact that not just some of us have “issues”. We ALL have “issues”. 

Not one of us has escaped the human condition of:

1. Not doing what we should do 

2. Doing what we know we shouldn’t do

Those Perfect People

If you meet someone that seems amazing and has it all together, just get to know them. You will quickly realize that there are many inconsistencies and hypocrisies under the surface. It is just part of our human nature to not be perfect. A popular song from the 80’s declared, “I’m only human. Of flesh and blood I’m made.” 

Some days I ask God, “How can you love my fickle heart? How can you continue to love me despite my hypocrisies? “

Our Heart

Jesus saw these human failures in the people he knew. He saw that they were all doomed to be inconsistent, superficial, and fickle. So he didn’t put his trust in humans. He only put his trust in God the Father.

We are not capable of always keeping to the high road as humans. When we put too much trust in another person, we make them an idol. We look at them as someone who can save us on a deep level that another person doesn’t have the power to do.

Another person may fill up the holes in your heart for a time. You may feel like you have found someone who is like “heaven on earth”. If you give it time, their heart will eventually fail your deepest desires for communion with another. 

Meet Your Needs

It’s like the woman at the well who was seeking something in the men she was with. When she met Jesus and talked with him, she realized that He was the answer she was looking for. A mere man could never really save her in the ways she needed saving the most. She was so excited about Jesus that she ran to tell everyone about this man she had met who knew her and loved her like no other.

Man doesn’t possess the power of life and death, of blessing and cursing. These things belong to the heavenly realm and supremely to God.
Only God is worthy to completely trust our hearts to.

• He sees our need to be saved from ourselves.
• He has mercy on us.
• He loves us even before we trust him as our God.
• He knows that we need His love and kindness, his compassion and forgiveness, his faithfulness and peace.

We need hope that we can count on when others fail our heart. Another person can never give us the deep abiding peace and contentment that God’s Spirit can. God knew we needed him in the flesh with us, to save us from ourselves, so he sent Jesus.

Jesus freely offered his life as a sacrifice to break the curse of death and give us complete access to the hope and peace and grace that only God can bring into our lives day after day. His mercy, grace, love, forgiveness are new every day just like a well that never runs dry.

Prayer

Thank you Jesus for giving your life up for me so that I wouldn’t have to trust other humans to fill up my deepest needs and desires. I’ve believed that people could do this many times in my life, but was brought back to the one truth that only you can meet me at my point of need. I can love others unselfishly only when I trust you to live in me and work in my heart. 

I am so grateful for your presence, your unwavering faithfulness and love for me, and how you never leave or forsake me. Whether I cause my own suffering through bad decisions or someone else hurts me, you always show me mercy. You also show me favor as your child. You carry me through valleys and back up onto mountaintops. You make beauty from the ashes of my life time and again. 

Because you show your love to me over and over, I will trust you today and always. Because you are faithful to me despite my indifference to you some days, I am grateful. Because you gave your life to give me your forgiveness, I lay my life before you to use as you will. Because of the favor you show me, I live in your peace, trusting that your heart will never fail me when I need you.

You never leave or forsake me. In Jesus Name, Amen.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Romans 7:19 ESV

“But Jesus, for His part, did not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all people [and understood the superficiality and fickleness of human nature], and He did not need anyone to testify concerning man [and human nature], for He Himself knew what was in man [in their hearts—in the very core of their being].”

John 2:24-25

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:5-8 ESV

“Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done! Can this be the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed)?” So the people left the city and were coming to Him.  Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Jesus [to have a meal], saying, “Rabbi (Teacher), eat.” But He told them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”  So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to completely finish His work.

John 4:29-34 AMP

Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Romans 5:5 ESV