Sheer Grace and Mercy

 God is holy, and so He must punish sin. God is love, so He always acts with grace and mercy. How do both of these things go together? The answer is that God moves to punish sin in our life, but if we repent and turn to Him, He is quick to turn away from His anger and act in love and mercy. That is what happened to Nineveh when Jonah preached to them about God's judgment on that great city. Everyone from the king down repented and cried out to God, so He canceled their drastic punishment. The unfortunate thing was that Jonah was not as loving and merciful as God. He knew God, and that is why he ran to go to Tarshish. (Jonah 4:1-2) What a tragedy! We need to learn from Jonah's failure in this vital area.

We need to know the character of God like Jonah did. We need to be assured of His sheer grace and mercy. He is much more gracious and merciful than we deserve all of the time. God is not easily angered like most people. God is rich in love, so that His love overflows to everyone, the just and the unjust. God is ready to stop at any time and change His plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness. If we are believers, we should realize all of these things about God, and we should be grateful for His nature. Then, we should be quick to allow the Holy Spirit to build these qualities into us. We must not let ourselves be prejudiced like Jonah and harbor such intense anger that we will not forgive and love those whom God forgives and loves. If we fail in this area, we disappoint God, and we fail to be the best witness we can be to those around us.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read Micah 1-3.