Spirituality Column #771

August 24, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

My Favorite Place to Be

By Bob Walters

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.” – Ephesians 2:4-5

“God is in control” and “God has a plan” – we hear it all the time – but God also gives us in this life freedom to challenge His control and the autonomy to disrupt His plans. Why would He do that?

What God wants – as He searches for us – is for us to freely find Him.  If love were not so precious, God could coerce us to find Him, gather to Him, and obey Him. But this God of love knows that only love based in our free will that leads us to choose to love others more than ourselves is the true divine love; that’s His love.

We are to give selflessly for God’s glory, rather than take selfishly in our greed.

That’s the part of our human existence we call life.  Need an example?  How about, Jesus came for everyone, but not everyone comes to Jesus?  Whatever God’s control or plans or provision for our well-being, our ignoring them, in the end, only hurts us. God’s righteousness will be true no matter what we do.  Ours depends on His.

God gives us freedom and autonomy, I believe, to seek and find Him, our Creator, in His loving, perfect, glory and life, not to “find ourselves” in our earthbound morass of pride, passions, fear, and death.  We properly fear God in His judgment only when we don’t completely trust the presence of His mercy.  When we do trust God – and I don’t mean a little bit and on our own terms of “God, do something for me,” but on the grand and eternal scale of “I am the Lord thy God” – what we discover is the comfort of His love and mercy, and the trust to let go of our fear of His wrath and judgment.

God abounds in mercy, and His mercy is why we can know peace.

As Paul so accurately frames God’s mercy in the Ephesians verse above, sinful man can often only perceive God’s mercy as an antidote or a “pass” for our behavioral, human transgressions.  A perfect life would be our ability to do exactly as God says, all the time.  It’s like following the directions on a cake mix … follow the directions, and you have a cake.  Follow your feelings … and you’ll have a mess.  Then, if you’re at the mercy of man … good luck.  God’s mercy won’t bake the cake; but it provides one with the good reason and confidence to follow directions, i.e., God’s truth.

A good Christian friend reminded me over that weekend that God “brings some low, and exalts others” (Psalm 75:7), and that we are “at God’s mercy.” And I thought, “Praise God for that!”  Most Bible verses about “mercy” refer to our transgressions in the behavioral realm, not the low moments and seasons of health distress, injustice, abuse, or other calamity traceable to human fallenness but not to our own sin.

Hebrews 4:16 instructs, “Let us then with confidence draw near the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.”  In any case or in any season, if I am at God’s mercy and am blessed to know that God is full of mercy, then “at God’s mercy” is exactly where I want to be.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) trusts God’s love and is thankful for God’s mercy.