Freely receive. Freely give.

How difficult do you find it to have mercy on people?

I think it's easy to say we freely offer mercy when it comes to big obvious things, but what about just people. People who make you angry, people that you know have sinned against you, people who are just difficult to love. 

Often I find that I want to be the potter. 

I see people, I see their defects by sin and I want to fix them, or make them pay. 

I don't think I have ever asked anyone to sacrifice and animal, but there are other ways. 

ex; avoiding them, not praying for them, using other means to make them "make-up" for their behavior that somehow offended me. 

When I was younger I heard in a preach once that when you become a christian, you loose the right to be offended. I'm not sure if I completely agree, but isn't that mercy. Forgiving people and letting go of their offenses when you don't feel like it and they just don't deserve it? 

I've been struggling to offer mercy and grace to people recently. I've been struggling to just love that difficult person to love. I know what I need to do to reconcile myself to them, to offer them mercy and really ask forgiveness for my lack of mercy. Then there is still the issue of why I am having a hard time with this. Then is dawned on me...

Sometimes it's so hard for me to freely receive from the Lord. To accept his mercy in times when I feel like I need to pay from my wrongs. Often times when I mess up, I make myself miserable with disappointment in myself and I leave no room for the mercy of the Lord. How can I give, what I do not have? I must receive in order to give. 

 

This verse gives me comfort;

(Hebrews)14Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens,^[e] Jesus the Son of God, 

let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 16Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

The Lord desires mercy, not sacrifice. (matthew 12)

When you feel like you don't deserve mercy, and others don't deserve it from you.  Know that you can choose to do what the Lords asks of you by will, not matter what you feel like. 

We need to bow to the son of God, not to our feelings. The only way to overcome evil is with good. 

Freely give as you have freely received. Kind of like walking in the opposite spirit. 

If we waited to give mercy when it was deserved, it wouldn't be mercy at all.

Freely receive. Freely give.