Tuesday, October 11, 2016

October 11, 2016: Sharing God’s Mercy

Daily Berry Patch Devotions in 2016 - Day 285 

Devotional Song:  … GO TO THIS LINK …  Please take the time to take in a You Tube video of one of my favorite singers, Gordon Mote, singing … Mercy Walked In, poignantly declaring the reality of God’s mercy covering the sin of any/all who surrender to Jesus’ loving and saving grace.


Highlight Passage: Luke 6:36 [NKJV] …   3
6 Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. 
… We can give mercy to others because He first gave it to us.
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Highlight Context: Luke 6:27-36 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK 
… Jesus on extending His forgiveness and mercy to others … just as He had extended it to all who would received His saving grace by faith thru repentance, leading to the ability to extend Christlike mercy to others thru forgiveness.
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Reference Passage #1 … Lamentations 3:22-23 [NKJV] …
22 Thru the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. 23 They are new every morning; … great is Your faithfulness. 
… We become what we think.

Reference Passage #2 … Hebrews 4:16 [NKJV] …
16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. 
… Because of the mercy/grace of Christ’s shed blood, we can come boldly to Him to receive the grace which allows us to extend His mercy to others.

Reference Passage #3 … Galatians 2:20 [NKJV] …
20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. 
… When we die to self, we can live for Christ and offer His grace to others.

My Journal for Today:  … Our Daily Bread author, Randy Kilgore, offered up the reality of our ability as Christians to offer the mercy/grace God has given us, in Christ, to others who need His grace. He wrote: When Jesus offered His words about forgiveness in Luke 6, He was helping us understand the difference between people of grace and people without grace. Those who know His forgiveness are to be strikingly unlike everyone else. We must do what others think impossible: Forgive and love our enemies. Jesus said, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (v. 36).

Isn’t it the reality of the attached photo that the intersection of mercy and grace is the cross? … When we can repent of our sin in faith and receive God’s mercy through the free gift of His saving and sanctifying grace, we become free-will conduits of the grace of His forgiveness to others, … agents of His grace, if you will.

And as I emotionally listen to today’s YouTube song from one of my favorite Christian singers, I realize that today - and all days - I need to be a channel of God’s mercy to others, … and especially those who have wronged me and need for God’s grace to be extended in forgiveness and mercy to them by God thru me.

My Prayer Today: Lord, give me the grace to offer Your mercy to others today. Amen

Blogger Note:  Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread, distributed online via email by RBC Ministries.  If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.

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