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Episode 8 – The BE-Attitudes: Living Your Best Life Part 6: Experience The Miracles Of Mercy

By Kimberly Faith

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In this episode, Kimberly Faith welcomes John and Lynn McLarty to delve into the next powerful Beatitude in Matthew 5:7: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Together, they explore what it means to live a life marked by mercy, sharing insights into how showing kindness and forgiveness transforms our own hearts and allows us to experience God’s miraculous grace.

 

Key Takeaways:

 

  1. Understanding Mercy: Mercy is choosing kindness and forgiveness over retribution, even when we could demand justice. It’s an intentional, grace-filled act that reflects God’s own mercy toward us.

 

  1. The Reality of Needing Mercy: Often, we don’t realize how desperately we need mercy until we’re completely broken and aware of our own shortcomings. When we come face to face with our poverty before God, we truly appreciate the mercy He has lavished on us, awakening us to the beauty of His grace.

 

  1. Living in the Awareness of God’s Mercy: Recognizing the depth of mercy we’ve received from God frees us to extend mercy to others. This ongoing awareness shapes how we treat those around us, as we naturally desire to pass on the mercy that has transformed our own lives.

 

  1. The Blessings of a Merciful Heart: When we embrace mercy, our hearts open to the miraculous. As we forgive and show kindness, we begin to see God’s blessings unfold in unexpected ways, witnessing His transformative power in our lives and relationships.

 

  1. Practicing Mercy in a Culture of Retaliation: Living with mercy in today’s world requires intentionality. Each Beatitude works in harmony to help us stay rooted in God’s ways. By being poor in spirit, abhorring sin, remaining humble, and seeking righteousness, we stay connected to the mercy we’ve received and can freely share it with others.

 

Join Kimberly, John, and Lynn as they offer a deeper understanding of mercy, showing how this vital Beatitude leads us into a life rich with God’s presence and filled with His abundant blessings.

Your feedback is welcome.

Do you have questions or comments? I'd love to talk about them on my next podcast.

Read the Podcast

Kimberly Faith: Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. We seek to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love. Welcome to Truth in Love, and we are on podcast 8. Wow. I can’t even believe this.

And, this is the continuation of the beatitudes series on living your best life, and this is part 6, which we are calling the miracles of mercy. And we have brought in the queen of mercy, for this podcast, my lovely mother, Lynn McLarty. Good morning, mom. Good morning. And, of course, we always welcome Baghdad who is just a pillar of wisdom in our family and and strength.

And so we’re gonna jump right into this, this podcast. The last podcast, we we talked about hungering and thirsting, after righteousness or the presence of God. And we kind of left off with this question, and that is, do we know what the blessings of mercy look like? And and I confessed that I did not have a clue what this beatitude meant. And this is, of course, Matthew chapter 5 verse 7 where Jesus says, blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.

And but through studying this podcast, I’ve just I’m amazed at the wisdom of what Jesus is teaching us about the value of mercy and how it grows in awareness of this cycle of mercy that he offers us because of the mercy we’ve received and the mercy we’re able to give by by basically having a heightened awareness of what this mercy looks like and the treasures it produces. And so we’ve called this podcast the Miracles of Mercy and experiencing the great miracles of mercy. So let’s just jump right in, and and and I I really want mom’s, input on this to to tell us, you know, what do you think of when you read this beatitude or when you think about mercy?

Lynn McLarty: Well, I was thinking about this, when Kim asked me to speak on this. And, I was thinking about that I have actually received so much mercy in my life. I go back to the pat podcast where we shared our testimony of salvation. And the family that led us to the Lord, and they had these 10 well behaved children, and I had 3 not so well behaved children. You could

Kimberly Faith: just say it, mom.

Lynn McLarty: We were wild. But, and what a light. As we would pass their farm, what a light they were. It was drawing us, and we didn’t really even know why. But, I’m just gonna say that they actually told their children not to ever go back down to the where these, hippies lived in the teepee.

They were warning their children. And I and I got to thinking about how God, through his mercy and love for me, drew us to their house by seeing their light, even though they didn’t really want to minister to us because they saw they were fearful of us. But how God, through his mercy, brought us to their front door, where I accepted Jesus as my savior. And, so when I think of mercy, I think about how much mercy I have received from God that, really, it was a miracle that we got saved, because, this family was thinking we were a little scary.

Kimberly Faith: And it

Lynn McLarty: made me think about how many people we might pass up in our lives, that maybe we think that they’re not worthy of our consideration. That we might think we’re about, you know, as Christians, sometimes we get a haughty, attitude that we’re kind of, okay, now our life is on course, but we forget about how when our life wasn’t on course. And and the direction our life could have gone, could have been we could have been homeless people. Mhmm. We could have been drug addicts.

We could have taken our life. We could have been hopeless, feeling helpless and hopeless. And, so it when I think of mercy, I think that we should never pass a person and think of them Well, they might be rich. We might think about rich people. Well, they don’t need mercy.

Kimberly Faith: -They’re not gonna listen.

Lynn McLarty: -They’re not gonna listen. -Right. Right. But really, whether you’re homeless or you’re living in a mansion, You need God’s mercy.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. That’s really good, mom. And and I think oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off.

Lynn McLarty: No. That’s alright.

Kimberly Faith: I I I I think that, you know, your your point is so well taken and is exactly what Jesus is talking about here. We in order to come to Christ for salvation, we learned this in the first beatitude. We have to be completely broken. We have to completely bankrupt. We use the the I you know, the the the concept of bankruptcy.

We have to admit that we’re without any merit on our own and come to Jesus for salvation that way, and then we need to do life that way with him. And we if we are not living in this miracle that we’re we’re experiencing mercy every day, it’s not just the mercy we had received for salvation, but it’s all the things that are going right. It’s all the things that God has not allowed to go wrong is that continued mercy. And, you know, how do we so how do we keep ourselves in this with a strong realization that we are not mercy is not a one off. It’s not we’ve arrived.

It’s a continual cycle. How do we keep that that attitude of mercy? Dad, do you have any thoughts about that?

John McLarty: Well, I think we can get a perspective from from Jesus. Mercy involves forgiveness. And I was just taken to this, passage out of Matthew 18 when, Peter came to Jesus and said, Lord, how’s off shall I shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? 7 times? Like, that would really be big of me.

And Jesus said Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee until 7 times, but until 70 times 7. So Jesus wants to have abundant mercy and one of the and evidenced by forgiveness. Then he tells the story. This is how how not to be merciful. Is this it’s a parable and it’s the a king forgave a servant a great debt, tremendous debt.

And that’s what we were forgiven. When we obtained the mercy of God, we were forgiven the great debt, our sin against the almighty God. And then a servant of the servant came and wanted forgiveness for his debt. It was just a tiny debt. And the servant that was forgiven much wouldn’t forgive the servant a tiny debt.

Well, word got back to the king that this had happened. So the king calls the servant back and says, basically, I’m I’m you’re you’re I’m throwing you in jail till you pay all my debt back. Justice. It was rough. Right.

Yeah. You wouldn’t forgive yours, you know, your your servant just a little bit, and I forgave you everything. So that’s that’s that kind of impacts it’s a perspective of how much mercy we should have towards others is how much mercy did God show us.

Kimberly Faith: Mhmm. You know? And and you kinda bring up the interplay between forgiveness and mercy, which are are kinda sister attitudes. You know, you have forgiveness is a personal thing. I forgive you because I’ve been forgiven, and mercy is withholding the treatment that when you have the right to inflict it.

Mhmm. You know, forgiveness is an individual thing that we do for ourselves. Mercy is something we do for somebody else. You know, that the servant in that parable, he could have forgiven the debt and then exercised mercy, which would be not exacting re be exacting repayment, right, which would have been done to him. And, you know, I I think that when we to show mercy to somebody else is is it’s even bigger than forgiveness because you can you can say I forgive this person, but then you maybe hold a grudge or which is not forgiveness.

Right? Or, you know, the the example I always think about when I think of mercy is when I’m always reminded of God’s mercy to me when somebody comes into my office who’s been charged with a crime. They’re guilty. Right? They’re desperate for mercy, especially, you know, some clients come in and say, well, I really didn’t do that.

Well and then you find out later through getting the the goods on them that they’d actually did it. And then they’re like, oh, I need mercy. Right? But they want that record erased. They want to minimize the collateral damage on their criminal record or their, you know, whatever.

And like you said, dad, God has completely erased our debt as far as the east is from the west. There’s that’s not even we can’t even fathom that distance. But when we have a a situation like, if I have a client who owes me money, you know, and I and and the lord lays on my heart, you that person needs that more money more than you do. To have mercy is is to affect me materially. It’s it’s something I have to decide that’s going to take something away from me.

You know? And I say, okay. I’m writing this debt off because god laid it on my heart to do this. And the only way I really can do that with a complete free heart is to be acknowledging the mercy I’ve received from Christ.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: It’s a cycle. And and and when when we talk about mercy, the miracle of mercy, it’s a cycle. We’re receiving so much that we have to give it away. Does that make sense?

John McLarty: Well, I can it’s forgiveness could just be this could be, not biblical forgiveness. Mhmm. But just in the world, forgiveness could just be, oh, you owe me so much money. You can never pay me, so I forgive you. But I’m gonna have a bad attitude towards you for the rest of our days.

That’s forgiveness in a sense, but not merciful forgiveness. Right. God not only forgave us for our sins, he loves us. Mhmm. He wants that personal relationship.

He doesn’t hold that against us.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And that’s that mercy that comes in. It’s forgiveness with the loving attitude.

Kimberly Faith: Well and and and it’s it’s interesting because in the verse the verses you were quoting about the the servant who didn’t forgive in Matthew chapter 18, it it it said that the king said, should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant just as I had pity on you? And then it says his master delivered him to his torturers. And I I think about that. It is a to to to live with unforgiveness or be unmerciful is to be delivered to the torture of living after the flesh, which which is compared in, you know, in the when in Galatians where where the fruits of the spirit are compared with the works of the flesh. The, you know, the wrath, the anger, the backbiting, all that torture that we necessarily enter into is a terrible place to live, and we’re out of the cycle of mercy.

Lynn McLarty: Yes. I I was thinking about there’s, blessings in that mercy and forgiveness. When you actually forgive somebody, what Kim was saying that when God forgives us, he our sins are far away as from the east as from the west. Well, sometimes we kinda live in that area of our life, forgetting the great mercy that God gave us, and we’re unable to experience the blessings of God because we’re thinking we’re above the of another person.

Kimberly Faith: Mhmm. Right.

Lynn McLarty: And, but just an experience I had of of forgiveness, forgiving somebody for something that they were holding a grudge against me, and I just forgave them. And I wasn’t receiving their forgiveness back, but the Lord just showed me just to reach out and be kind and

John McLarty: And that

Lynn McLarty: was the mercy. And that was mercy. Right. And it took several years, but I have received such blessings in that relationship now. They have finally, maybe, just forgiven me for what the wrong they thought I did to them.

But I I’m actually receiving blessings because the relationship is up. I’m getting to encourage them and they encourage me, and there’s a lot of blessings in actual true forgiveness and true mercy that you share with other people.

Kimberly Faith: It’s like forgiveness is the act of rectifying yourself to God and to them. Mercy is the is the act of acting like it never happened

Lynn McLarty: Yes. Of of

Kimberly Faith: of doing things that show that you are not holding that grudge. You’re acting in ways that they don’t deserve and blessing them in ways that they don’t deserve because God is blessing you in ways you don’t deserve.

Lynn McLarty: We don’t deserve very much. I’m telling you.

John McLarty: So true forgiveness should restore and and make loving attitudes flourish.

Kimberly Faith: Mhmm. Like taking the servant, the parable to servant. You know? When once he had been forgiven and restored to good graces of his master because the 1,000,000,000 have been, you know, pardoned, basically, He could have made the decision. You know, this guy owes me $10, and I’m just gonna forgive him that forgive that debt.

My mercy is gonna be demonstrated on, hey, man. Come have dinner with me tonight.

Lynn McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: You know? And the example you gave us is good mom, and it’s it’s what I think we have to do in order to live in this cycle of mercy is that we have to be constantly thanking God for all the blessings that he has given us, his blessings of mercy to us. Because once you start counting those blessings of mercy, you wanna give them away. You you can’t keep them to yourself. And that’s when you like, on you used the example of a rich man.

You know? Well, that person probably won’t listen. Right? I’ll never forget a story. I I had a a guy come to my office.

He’s very, very wealthy. And, and the holy spirit during and he had a just pretty minimal legal problem. You know? But he was concerned about it. And the whole time he was talking to me, I just the holy spirit was like, you need to talk to him about his soul.

And he was intimidating. It was intimidating. You know? It’s like, oh, I really want him as a client. I don’t really wanna, you know, do the religious thing, and he might not wanna be, you know, blah blah blah.

Right? You know, you think. And I just but the holy spirit wouldn’t shut up. So I was like, okay. I was so I don’t remember what I asked him, but it was a pretty innocuous question about, you know, hey.

Tell me what makes you happy or something like that. You know, what gives you joy? And so we had the whole discussion about the the, you know, the joy that comes from God. And it was an amazing discussion. And, you know, at the end of the discussion, he he made the comment.

He said, you know, I I really didn’t expect to hear about Jesus in a lawyer’s office. He said, but I’m so grateful. Mhmm. And it was a complete you know, I was just you know, how you just shake your head after something happened to you. God, I’m sorry.

I doubted you. You know? But he was he was very hard for me to approach because of my predisposed notion about whether he deserved mercy, you know? And and it wasn’t and it was because we have these these prejudgments we make on people because we forget how much mercy. I wasn’t thinking, what if he is not born again?

What if he does if this if I’m the only person he ever meets that knows Jesus? I wasn’t thinking about the mercy I’d received. I was thinking about, you know, my financial issues. Right? And but when we start living in this well, I call it the miracle of mercy because it’s a cycle.

We’re so fully aware of the mercy, the great vast ocean of mercy we’ve received from God that we wanna bless even our enemies. And it opens up all those opportunities like you were talking about Yeah. To bless our enemies. And I’m I say enemies. I I and I’m not saying, you know, that we’re we’re gonna bless, you know, somebody who comes over and tries to bomb our house.

I’m I’m saying the people that hold themselves out as holding grudges, unforgiveness, maybe the neighbor doesn’t like our dog or whatever. Right?

John McLarty: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: So it’s it’s really in in this beatitude, I feel like it’s opened up, an entirely different dimension of attitude for me. And and this was so amazing about these this beatitude study. It’s like, God says, okay. There are these multifaceted attitudes you should be developing, you know, that are gonna open up the blessings of heaven to you. And one of them is mercy.

You need to be in the cycle of mercy, Kim. It doesn’t matter who the person is. You need to be thinking about, is there some mercy that you can share with this person because you’ve got it overflowing?

John McLarty: You know, that cycle of mercy, I’m thinking it’s an everyday thing. Mhmm. And it if if we’re aware of God’s mercy toward us and exercise that toward others, it helps us through every day. We just went through a to a conference, and you’re around a lot of people.

Lynn McLarty: Mhmm.

John McLarty: And I’m just I’ve noticed, people might do things inadvertently. Maybe they they walked by you or, you know, you were talking to them and someone else got their attention. And we have these what to be little offenses every day. Right. And I just noticed myself always thinking to shake that off.

Kimberly Faith: Mhmm.

John McLarty: This person is needs you’re a Christian witness. You don’t need to have some bad attitude. And it’s just our pride is so dominant in our life.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: But that cycle of mercy, we can just go like, this person still needs Jesus. Like, somebody like, somebody offended you. Mhmm. And it was not a legitimate offense, or sometimes it wasn’t even. It’s just an inadvertent.

Kimberly Faith: Or a false accusation.

John McLarty: But this frees us up to just have the love of Christ.

Kimberly Faith: Right. It’s like mercy is like the refining fire that keeps the dross from building up in our life.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: You know? And and what’s really interesting is what the Bible says about mercy even affecting the next generation. In Psalms 103, 17, and 18, it says, but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children’s children to such as keep his covenant and to those who remember his commandments to do them. You know, last last podcast was about seeking his righteousness first, seeking first his righteousness and everything else will be added unto us. I I I think when we understand just the vastness of God’s mercy towards us, then we have so much we can give away that, like you said, dad, if somebody, you know, shifts gears and and walks away from us in the middle of the conversation because so many more importance come along, it’s never about us.

It’s like, oh, you know what? It’s okay. I can go on to the next person I can minister to. I can go on and I the people

John McLarty: And I’m not going to hold a bad attitude to that person

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And, like, you know, ignore them next time they come you know?

Kimberly Faith: And you can’t.

John McLarty: Well, you yeah.

Kimberly Faith: You can’t because you don’t. Because your mindset isn’t about you. It’s about all the mercy you’ve received and the grace you’ve received from God.

Lynn McLarty: Yeah. I was thinking too that, those that fear God and I was thinking what I had this picture in my mind of taking a candle and going into places that you fear and let your light shine. Like, you might fear like Kim did talking to this rich guy. Mhmm. Or we might fear going and talking to a homeless person.

But if we let our light shine, it it’s showing mercy to them because they’re seeing that. They’re being drawn to that light. Mhmm. And that’s the merciful thing we can do is have them drawn to to Jesus. Right.

Not to us, but we’re the instrument God uses to draw them to Jesus.

John McLarty: Amazing. That’s actually liberating.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It is. Yes.

John McLarty: In our behavior. Yeah. Because we just

Lynn McLarty: We don’t have to fear.

John McLarty: We don’t have to fear.

Kimberly Faith: Is liberating. And mercy is a result of God’s love, and God’s love is perfect, and it casts out fear.

Lynn McLarty: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: So when the Bible tells us to fear God, it’s not to be afraid of God, but rather to fear the loss of his our sense of his presence. You know? We would rather be in God’s presence than to be anywhere else. And and it is unrighteousness that takes us from his presence or the the sense of his presence. I like to say the sense of his presence because God is if we’re born again, he’s always present.

John McLarty: Mhmm.

Kimberly Faith: But we don’t always sense his presence. Like, it’s kinda like, you know, my kids are always my kids, but they may not sense my presence if like, when they were you know, like, when one of my kids was was a teenager and and she was doing some things behind my back, and I was upset with her, and she had to be, you know, put in her room. Well and she knew I was mad at her. She was not feeling the love of my presence at the moment, whether she was feeling the wrath of my presence. And, and nobody wants to live that way.

Right? We wanna live in in in the peace and the love that god the comfort god gives us. And so when we’re striving to do that by living with loving him with all of our heart, soul, and mind, we are also becoming very aware of the great mercy that he, that he gives us. I think I think this this beatitude, Jesus is giving us this opportunity to become awakened to mercy, to become aware that we can that we can live in this cycle of receiving, being aware of how much we’ve received and therefore able to give. Mhmm.

Does that does that make sense? And Yes. And then we’re blessed because we’re not we’re not burdened by giving away mercy. We’re not burdened by having mercy towards our fellow man, which is is also not forgiving. Right?

Because forgiveness does does When we empty our

Lynn McLarty: cup, God continues to fill it.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Or show us how full it already is.

Lynn McLarty: Yes. So he just we pour mercy out. He’s pouring mercy in.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Right. And then going back to the the parable that dad read, you know, that that servant that wicked servant, at the moment his master said, I am giving you I’m forgiving you this debt. His his debt was was wiped away, and he had the opportunity to experience mercy. But it’s interesting that the the parable doesn’t say the master unforgave his debt.

Now he just let him experience what it feels like to live with debt. He ex he let him experience what that he he did not what he missed out by failing to be merciful. Mhmm. And that’s what we do when we hold grudges, when we we we insist on exacting debts from people, whatever that looks like. You know?

Well, he didn’t invite me over for lunch, and I invited him to lunch. So, you know, it’s I’m done. Right? Then we miss out, and we are living in the tortured existence of no blessings from God Right. That we could have been capturing. And I

John McLarty: think there’s a truth there that and we’ve received mercy that can never be taken back because we’re eternally saved. Right. So we receive mercy from God. But then as Christians, I think if we’re unmerciful, our life is just this can be this bitter cycle of not in the mercy cycle. But if we’re forgiving, I think that puts us in a position where, of course, you know, trials and tribulations can always happen to us.

Lynn McLarty: Mhmm.

John McLarty: But if we’re merciful towards others, God can pour out his mercy toward us in this life.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Because we need his continued mercy. Right. Sometimes Salvation’s taken care of, but just, this this the peace of this life.

Kimberly Faith: Right. I think that I think I don’t know. In my personal experience, the more that I appreciate the mercy I know about, the more god awakens me to all the mercy I’m receiving that I don’t even know about.

John McLarty: Exactly.

Kimberly Faith: You know, like, I almost hit a deer the other day. And, you know, actually, I I went up on this I came up on this back highway that, you know, there’s always deer, and there’s 2 little deer playing with a tom turkey in the middle of the road. And I had to stop my vehicle so they could finish their little, you know, whatever they were doing and get out of the way. But I thought, lord, how many times I have traveled this road that you have prevented? Because I think I hold the record of the state of Missouri for the most amount the the highest number of deer killed in my vehicles.

I’m up to 10. And I think about but I was never injured in any of those you know, not to say if I had been injured that that that God couldn’t have worked that for his good. He certainly could. But you start thinking about all the things that God didn’t allow to happen. Because I really think that we when we become awakened to how much mercy we know about, then we also can think about, well, God has probably there’s probably, like, at least half as much or even more that we don’t know about.

It’s kinda like when our kids were young. You know, they didn’t have a clue how they got the next meal. Right? They didn’t know all the behind the scenes that went into that. They just knew the meal was there.

And when their meal wasn’t there, they did know about that. Right? They were very aware of that. And and as parents, we don’t we don’t set a 5 year old down and say, let me explain how much mercy you’re getting every day.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: You know? But we hope when they get to be you know, I was talking to my son yesterday. He was telling me about all those meals he was making with his new green egg green egg grill and his, you know, just details. Right? And it just made my heart happy that he’s realized that he can serve other people with these very intricate meals.

But at 5 years old, he didn’t understand that. He just wanted just, you know, a a medium rare rib eye that was hopping over the hills still, but he didn’t know how it got there. But when we start growing up in our faith, and Jesus is saying, become aware of this mercy, Then we start giving it away because we realize how much we have. You know? And it’s I think that’s when we really start getting to see the miracles.

We get to see miracles that are just like, wow, lord. You just did something like what you described. This this person who had held a grudge against your mom and or whatever. And you got to see miracles that would have never happened had you not understood mercy and started giving that in overt ways to to this person.

John McLarty: And and we see that in this life. You just gave the examples. How many times have you heard somebody, a new parent, all of a sudden have this new appreciation for their parents? Right. They went, oh my goodness.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Lynn McLarty: The

John McLarty: my parents did all this for me that I’m doing

Lynn McLarty: for this little baby,

John McLarty: and I had no appreciation for them. Well, as we realize the depths and the lengths that god has shown us mercy

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: We can appreciate it and show that to others.

Kimberly Faith: It’s it’s like thankful for it. It’s like god says, Jesus is saying, hey. You can experience mercy from both ends. You know, you can appreciate how much you’ve received. And then you can enjoy what I enjoy when I give it to you because it delights God to give us mercy because it reconciles us to him.

Yeah. And if we can delight in giving other people mercy when we when we instead of exacting justice when we have the right to, then we get to to to give the opportunity to to share what God has has done for us. Right? It’s another opportunity to share the gospel. Hey.

You can be reconciled to God. You know? I, in in in talking about how our our kids don’t really understand, and when we were children, we didn’t really understand just how much our parents did behind the scenes and and how we kinda grow into that. I I have a really great example that, god allows us to participate in things, and we don’t really fully when we don’t really fully understand the far reaching effects. And, you know, we may plant a seed here and not get to see it grow.

Right? But I think one of the one of the benefits of mercy that god he sometimes allows us to see the full picture sometimes. And we’re doing this, you know, this, this study here, and and this is 2024. Well, back, I don’t know, 6, 7 years ago, god gave me a song called, Glass House. And and it and it and I didn’t I wasn’t I hadn’t studied this beatitude.

I didn’t know anything about, you know, really about mercy, like I’ve been studying it. But the the lyrics now mean so much more to me after having studied this. And I didn’t even understand these lyrics, but now I I kinda do. And when, and I just wanna read some of the lyrics. It it says, look through the window of your glasshouse.

Outside outside stand vacant eyes and broken heart, created like you by holy god. Oh, how very like her you are. So before you cast that first stone, remember the glass in your own home. In our glass house lives amazing grace, miracle of mercy. You know, this is this is it it it it’s it’s so amazing to live in the miracle that we have received so much mercy.

It is a miracle. And we get to experience this thing called grace, which is unmerited favor. Not just the receiving, part the best part of receiving it is giving it, really. You know, I was standing outside, the other night watching, fireworks show that just kinda sprang up on my back deck. Right?

I was like, wow. Where’s this coming from? You know? And I was all by myself. And I was like, well, this is really pretty.

But how much better would it have been if I had somebody to enjoy it with, to give to give that view? You know? And and that’s mercy. You know? God allows us to experience it, but how much better is it when we get to give it away or share it with somebody else?

Because that’s that is the that is really the the miracle of the fruits of the spirit, really. We’re receiving so much that we’re re we rejoice to give away love and joy and peace. Right? And so I I don’t I I think, well and just kind of the this other song, remember that wretched place you came from, all those sleepless nights and hopeless dreams, dying slowly, fearing the unknown, then blessed redemption filled your soul. Now in God’s mercy, we find no stones, only his heart which welcomes us home.

In our glass house lives amazing grace, miracle, mercy. I had no idea what that even meant, and God gave me that song. And I just love that Jesus says, guess what? Here’s an attitude. If you’ll develop an attitude of mercy because of all the mercy you have received, you’re gonna live in miracles that are gonna blow your mind.

You know? And I I I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s any final thoughts on this, but this is a great awakening to to live in in mercy.

Lynn McLarty: It’s such a blessing to see others receive that mercy. To to watch the delight in their faces and the the change that they go through by receiving the little mercy. We experienced that just recently. And I won’t get into it, but to see how God took this little flower that was kinda closed up, and then with a little bit of love and mercy, how that flower just opened up, and and we got to experience that. So just being one of God’s children and seeing his mercy affect somebody else’s life is such a gift.

Kimberly Faith: And and we get to experience what Jesus experiences with us. Yes. Uh-huh. Wow. That’s that is a miracle.

It is. It is such a miracle. And so we’re gonna wrap this one this beatitude up. And and I’m just I’m really excited about the next beatitude because it is, it’s blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God, Matthew 58. And and I you know, we’ve talked about how we are getting to experience a cycle of mercy, which is to see really a glimpse of what God sees and gets to experience when he gives us mercy.

Right? Mhmm. And but what does it mean? How can we see God? I mean, don’t you wanna see God more?

If God is the okay. Let’s just break this down. If God is the creator of everything we love, everything we enjoy, he’s the creator of everything good. Don’t you wanna see more of the guy who created this all? You know?

Well, Jesus tells us how. And so, for next time, we’re gonna we’re gonna leave this question on the table. Do you see the evidence of God all around you, and do you want to? This has been the Truth in Love podcast, and we are so glad that you joined us. We hope that you will join us in our next podcast.

Hallelujah. You have been listening to the Truth in Love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at gofaithstrong.com. Hallelujah. You rescued me.



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