Choose Love (10 page)

It wasn’t until I came to know the love of the one true God through receiving His unfathomable gift—Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself—that I began to understand how God not only knew
who I
was
, but He also cared about
who I would become
. He loved me and would never leave me to fend for myself as I had always done in the past. I had been searching for the smallest crumbs under God’s table, and He had prepared a magnificent feast for me in His royal banquet hall.

Only then did I begin to comprehend God’s amazing grace and mercy, and I was overwhelmed by the love of God igniting both.

Understanding God’s Grace

Grace is divine assistance that is undeserved, given to us so that we can be restored to right relationship with God. It’s a reprieve or exemption from having to pay the price for anything we’ve done that is not according to God’s ways. It’s a gift to us because Jesus already paid that price and we have received Him by faith (Romans 3:24).

By the grace of God we are saved from the consequences of choosing our own ways over God’s. This is no small matter because it is not something we can do on our own (Ephesians 2:8). And it is not about conjuring up anything with positive thinking. I am not saying that happy, hopeful thoughts accomplish nothing. They are good, but you can only go so far with them. Our good thoughts don’t save us from the eternal consequences of our actions. They don’t get us into a right and close relationship with God. They don’t bring us into eternity in God’s presence. They can’t.

We are not saved by doing everything perfectly. We are not capable of doing that anyway, no matter how hard we may try (Galatians 5:4-5). We are saved because
Jesus
did everything perfectly and we have chosen to receive Him by faith.

Grace is never given on the basis of what we’ve done
.
It is God’s gift of love to us
.

Imagine that you are locked up in prison and have been sitting on death row for years, waiting to die for a crime you committed. And there are eyewitnesses who saw you and testified against you.
But one day someone high up appears to you and says, “If you put your trust in me, I will see you are pardoned so thoroughly that it will be as if it never happened. You will be completely free from all past transgressions forever.” How relieved and joyful would you be? How indebted would you feel toward that person?

This is what happens to you when you put your trust in Jesus.

Jesus came because of God’s love. Grace means we don’t have to work our way to God. We don’t have to struggle to be good enough to be with Him.

He came to
us.

To be with
us
.

He still comes to us, and to anyone who doesn’t know Him, in order to draw us all to Himself by His love and grace.

God’s “throne of grace” is where we can go in prayer anytime in order to find the help we need (Hebrews 4:16).

Understanding God’s Mercy

God’s mercy is unmerited favor, an act of divine compassion that does not give punishment that is warranted. In other words, God does not give us what we deserve. He could judge us but He doesn’t. Instead, He shows mercy when we come to Him with a humble and repentant heart.

God is merciful because He is “gracious and full of compassion” (Psalm 111:4). His mercy is shown to you because He loves you and has compassion for you. Signs of His mercy are everywhere when you know and love Him
.
“The earth is full of the goodness of the L
ORD
” (Psalm 33:5).

God promises us so many things in Scripture that assure us of His mercy. For example, He promised that the flood in Noah’s time would never happen again. He promised that “ ‘the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but
My kindness shall not depart from you,
nor shall My covenant of peace be removed,’ says the L
ORD
, who has mercy on you” (Isaiah 54:10).

He promised a rainbow to remind us.

In the same chapter, God spoke that famous promise to those who love and serve Him. “
No weapon formed against you shall prosper
” (Isaiah 54:17). That promise is a sign of God’s compassion and mercy.

With so much evidence in the Word that God is merciful toward us, why do so many of us doubt that? Is it because we don’t read His Word? Or if we do, we don’t believe it? Or do we look at God’s Word as just history instead of His love letter to us? Or do we identify more with being guilty than we do with being forgiven? Or do we see the things that are wrong in our life and blame God for them instead of seeking Him for the solution and thanking Him for all that is good? Or when we read God’s Word, do we look for His judgment more than His love?

Whatever the reason, we must ask God to help us recognize His mercy shown toward us every day, for that is evidence of His great love for us.

God’s Mercy Is a Sign of His Goodness and Love for Us

God’s mercy is a sign of His constant, deep, unfailing love for us. We must “give thanks to the L
ORD
, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever” (Psalm 136:1).

I had a pastor a number of years ago who was not only a great teacher and preacher of the Word, but He also clearly demonstrated the love of God. He was known for that. It was a great gift.

Pastor Tim had been a professional football player and had even won a Super Bowl with his team. He had the Super Bowl ring to prove it. He was a very large man, and I am certain he looked extremely ominous to the opposing team on the field. Let’s just say that no one would want to be in his way after the football was hiked to the quarterback.

When he later became our pastor, we thought of him as a very large teddy bear because he consistently and abundantly exuded God’s love to everyone in a joyful, sweet, and non-judgmental way.

I remember a specific teaching of Pastor Tim’s on the goodness and mercy of God. He based it on the last verse of Psalm 23 that says, “Surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
; and I will dwell in the house of the L
ORD
forever.” Pastor Tim had a great way of demonstrating the points of his teaching so we would not forget it. And I have never forgotten this one in particular.

Pastor Tim demonstrated that verse by asking two men from the congregation to stand just behind him—one on either side of him—and follow him wherever he walked and talked. He asked us to imagine that he was driving his car and he could see them in the rearview and side mirrors. He named one “Goodness” and the other “Mercy.” He told us that as we walked through each day, we should imagine looking in the rearview mirror of our life and seeing the “Goodness” of God on one side and the “Mercy” of God on the other following us everywhere we went. And we could trust that they would always be there until we went to be with the Lord.

There’s that mirror thing again. Only we are not seeing
ourselves
. Nor are we seeing our
past
. We are seeing God’s
goodness
and
mercy
reflected in those mirrors.

Not long ago I was driving home after dark, and I noticed that the car that had followed me out of the parking lot was still behind me, making every one of the many turns I did. I began to become concerned, but every time I looked in the rearview mirror I said, “Thank You, Lord, that Your goodness and mercy will follow me all of the days of my life.” The car followed me into my neighborhood, but as I turned right onto my street, the car turned left. The driver was probably just a neighbor, but that mental image of goodness and mercy gave me great peace.

God’s goodness and mercy are signs of His deep and unfailing love for us that tell us He has our back.

Now every time I’m faced with difficulties, I recall that picture. What a comfort that is. I hope you, too, will imagine a rearview mirror and see God’s goodness and mercy following you every day of your life—all because He loves you.

God Shows His Mercy by Forgiving Us

Because of God’s grace we are forgiven of everything we have ever done wrong in the past once we receive Jesus. In fact, we are forgiven by God so completely that He does not remember it. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). “I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Hebrews 8:12). God wants us to forget about our failures too, and stop reliving them, rehashing them, and beating ourselves up over them.

When we forgive someone who has hurt us, we
choose
to let it go but usually don’t forget it. We
decide
to not allow the remembrance of the grievance to cause us to be bitter, angry, or unforgiving but still remember.

When God forgives us, our sin against Him is completely erased from the records
.

David said, “
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered
.
Blessed is the man to whom the L
ORD
does not impute iniquity
” (Psalm 32:1-2).

What it means when “the L
ORD
does not impute iniquity” is that our sin is not even put on our record.

Sin
is an archery term meaning to miss the mark.

Iniquity
means to be morally depraved.

Transgression
means rebellion.
Not living God’s way is rebellion against Him
.

Rebellion
is the same as witchcraft—which means living in opposition to God’s ways (1 Samuel 15:23).

Being released from the consequences of our transgressions and opposition to God’s ways is one of the greatest acts of mercy God does for us.

However, once we have received Jesus and we
again
commit a transgression against the Lord, by His mercy He allows us to repent of that. God asks that we come to Him with a repentant heart and confess our transgression before Him. He already knows what we
have done, but He wants to hear it from us and see that our heart is truly repentant.

God’s mercy means that when you confess and repent of any transgression against God and decide to walk away from it and never intend to do it again
,
He forgives you
.

If we do not repent before God, we become miserable and it ages us. It puts a burden on our mind, emotions, and shoulders we were not designed to carry. But when we confess our sins, He forgives us and releases us from the consequences of them.

The physical, mental, and emotional consequences of unconfessed sin take a major toll on us. David, who was no stranger to unrepentant sin, said, “When I kept silent,
my bones grew old
through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
my vitality was turned into the drought of summer
.
I acknowledged my sin to You
, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the L
ORD
,’ and
You forgave the iniquity of my sin
” (Psalm 32:3-5). Even those who are the most rebellious and rejecting of the Lord’s ways are forgiven when they repent before Him.

God doesn’t forgive us because we deserve it; He forgives us because He loves us and is merciful toward us
.

We all recognize the places in our heart that harbor thoughts, ideas, feelings, and attitudes that don’t please God. We know ourselves all too well in that way. And we assume God is not pleased with us and therefore we don’t deserve answers to our prayers.

But we have never
deserved
His blessings. That’s what His mercy is all about.

We are forgiven of all past sins by His grace (Ephesians 1:7)
.
After we receive Jesus, we are then forgiven of any subsequent sins because of His mercy
.

God could just say, “I’ve forgiven you of all your past sins, but
that’s it
. No more. I’m not doing this again. I expect you to be perfect from now on.”

But it seems He knows us all too well.

God has set it up that the only way distance comes between us and Him is if we miss the mark He has for us—which we all do at one time or another—and then do not confess and repent of it. Our unconfessed sin sets consequences in motion, and God, who does not reward bad behavior, waits to bless us until we are sorry enough to turn to Him for forgiveness.

King David confessed and repented of his sinful affair with Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband in order to hide his sin once she became pregnant. But David waited far too long to confess and repent. He had to be confronted about his choices by Nathan, a prophet of God. Once confronted, David went before God and said, “
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your loving kindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions
.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin
” (Psalm 51:1-2).

Even though David finally repented, he had still allowed the consequences of his unconfessed sins to be set in motion, which was the death of his and Bathsheba’s child together.

Don’t allow disobedience to God’s ways to put up a wall between you and Him. Bring it to Him immediately with a repentant heart—meaning you are sorry about it and don’t intend to do it again. God waits to answer our prayers until we get our heart right.