Embracing Mercy and Grace in Our Lives

1) "Mercy is God not punishing us for our sins. You know, and grace is the blessings that God gives us that we haven't earned, but he does not withhold them from us. That's grace. Now, why is there a necessity for our mercy? Mercy is that our mercy is from Romans 3, 23. all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 6, 23 says, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Now, what that means is that without mercy, then we would have no mercy. We would have death. And we talk about the eternal death, not death from the life that we live today, but eternal death. And what we're looking for is the opportunity to have eternal life with God. And the only way we can do that is for God to forgive us of our sins, that we repent, and that he offers us the mercy." [02:55] (72 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "David recognized that his sin is ultimately against God. And that's why he asked forgiveness. And that's the difference between David and Saul. Saul recognized that he had done something wrong, but he didn't ask forgiveness. He blamed someone else. David didn't blame anybody. For his transgression. David said, I blew it. God, forgive me. Okay. I'm ashamed. Okay. Of what I've done. Okay. And he, and David recognizes that. We can find other verses in the Old Testament that talks about the need for forgiveness and need for mercy. Leviticus 16, 21 says, The high priest will confess the sins of the people over a scapegoat, symbolizing that all sin must be acknowledged before God." [04:38] (51 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "Now, again, forgiveness is not just the removal of guilt. It's the restoration and a renewed relationship with God. David prayed for a cleansing and a transformed heart. Created me a clean heart. Because of that, David is known as a man after God's own heart. Because God forgave him, and God blessed him, and God gave him mercy, and God gave him grace. And that same mercy and grace that David got from God, we can get today. But we can only get it if we act like David and humble ourselves and go to God and say, I'm sorry. I know I sinned against you. And so we're going to get that straight by not doing that." [07:24] (54 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "You can't poke someone and shake their hand and talk to them when you've got a barrier between you. So you want to eliminate that barrier. We want to eliminate that barrier between us and God. Because sin is a barrier. Sin is a barrier between us and God. So what we want to do is we want to remove that barrier by asking for forgiveness and receiving that forgiveness, receiving that mercy, receiving that grace, so that we have a closer relationship with God. And then that allows us to have joy, have joy. You know, the Bible says you can be joyful in all things. So we want that joy, and we only can get it once we have asked for forgiveness, okay, and then accepted God's mercy and his grace in our life, okay?" [11:30] (52 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "Now, understanding that the mercy comes from asking God for forgiveness. Now, grace comes because God loves us. God loves me. And so he blesses me with things that I don't deserve. He saved me from situations that I was in because he knew that I was going the wrong way, and I may not have known it, but he knew it, and he blessed me. That's the grace. The song says, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. It saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Okay. That's the amazing grace. That is the grace." [13:02] (52 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "What it means is that just like Christ gives us mercy and grace, just like God gives us mercy and grace, we have to do the same thing with people here on earth today. Just like when we do something wrong, we want somebody to give us mercy. We want grace. We need to extend that mercy and extend that grace to people around us. Sometimes people are going to do things that's going to hurt us. Sometimes it hurts really, really bad, but that does not change the fact that we have to offer mercy. Not offer, we have to give it we have to give grace. Now, I'm not suggesting that someone harming you has a physical harm and it's going to be, you know, you need to stand away from that or separate yourself from that. I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is when someone comes to you and says, I'm sorry, you can't hold it against them. You've got to say, okay, just like Christ forgave me for my sin, for what I did wrong, I forgive you. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the grace and mercy that we are supposed to share with everyone around us. We have to extend that every day because there's going to be a time when we're going to want that mercy. We're going to want that grace." [22:10] (100 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)