How do you love mercy in your life?

June 26 - June 30, 2023 | Always Peachy Devotionals | Mercy Week 4

Happy last week of June!

Can you believe the month of June is almost over? Next week is the Fourth of July, and I hope everyone is planning something grill-related. Maybe with a bunch of fireworks?

The summer is flying by, and if we aren’t careful it’s going to get totally away from us. I’m trying to be more intentional with how I use my time, but it’s difficult when there are so many fun things to do.

What are the things you love to do? We all have hobbies or exercises or activities we do in our everyday lives that make us happy. What are yours?

I love to write, obviously, but I also love reading and cooking and organizing my library and taking long walks under blue skies. I love music and movies and watching a really well-written television show.

What are things you LOVE?

Does “mercy” make your top 10? It’s not on my list, if I’m being honest. But it should be. Because God doesn’t just want us to live a lifestyle of mercy; He wants us to LOVE mercy. He wants it to be so ingrained in our hearts and minds that it’s something we look forward to doing.

We’ve been talking all this month about how to live with mercy and what living a merciful lifestyle looks like. We’ve talked about what mercy is and what it isn’t. We’ve talked about the potential reasons we are hesitant to show mercy to others, and we’ve talked about why mercy matters so much to God. But now we reach the hard part.

This is where the rubber meets the road. What are the practical choices we can make every day so that we are choosing to live a life of mercy—and not just living with mercy but loving it?

• June 26 - Help those who are hurting

• June 27 - Be patient with others

• June 28 - Give people a second chance

• June 29 - Let someone else win

• June 30 - Respond to insults with kindness

Living a merciful life isn’t something that will come naturally to any of us. It’s directly opposed to the fallen human nature all of us have to manage, but with God’s Spirit living in our hearts, we can do impossible things.

I hope this study of Mercy has been helpful and encouraging for you. It has really helped me look at my perspective of mercy in a completely new light, and it’s helped me find new ways of implementing it in my life.

Mercy is a challenge for us, though. Let’s just be honest about that. It’s hard to show mercy to people, but our memory verse for this week comes at showing mercy from a different angle. This week’s verse is 1 John 2:6.

I hate responding to Bible questions when the answer: Because Jesus says so. But sometimes it’s the most clear response.

Why should we show mercy to people? Because Jesus says so.

If we say that we follow Jesus, we should be patterning our lives after Him. We should be living the way He did. We should be building relationships with people the way He did, working the way He did, serving the way He did. All of it. If we aren’t, are we truly following Him?

But “because Jesus says so” isn’t the only reason to live a life of mercy. This entire month we’ve been studying why mercy matters to God and what the benefit of mercy is to us. We all want mercy in our lives, don’t we? Well, by showing mercy to others, God promises to show mercy to us. And even more than that, by obeying God by showing mercy to people who don’t deserve it (which is the whole point) He will bless us abundantly—more than we can imagine or contain.

So show mercy today. Not because that person in front of you deserves it, but because they don’t. Show mercy in Jesus’ name. It won’t just change your heart. It might change theirs too.

Love you guys.

Amy

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