The Mercy Papers 8

Kopp Disclosure

(John 3:19-21)

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Reclaim the Bow

Discovering Original Mercy

Copyright Reserved, 2017

The Mercy Papers (8)

Coupled with worship which is the only indispensable activity of people who honor God as Source, Starter, Sovereign, and Savior, discovering and extending original grace and mercy is the best way to love like God to love Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Blessing Him thusly yields personal and corporate benefits.

Jesus: “The mercy you give to others will be the mercy you get from God…If you forgive others, you will be forgiven by God.”

The corollary is damning.

Existential heavenliness and hellishness have eternal consequences.

While predestination yields to the ultimate sovereignty of God judging eternal destiny, volition is emphasized with greater frequency by Jesus and throughout Holy Scripture.

The paradox is comforting.

No one can defer, deter, or detour God’s saving sovereignty.

God wins sooner or later, usually sooner than later, and definitely in the end.

It’s predestined.

Choice or the decision to receive Jesus into the head, heart, and gut as Lord and Savior or not  is the responsibility of all who have heard His inclusive call to existential confidence in the assurance of eternal life by grace through faith in Jesus.

Succinctly, we are predestined by God yet must choose between God and idolatries.

Rather than deepening intellectual befuddlement, knowledge of God’s predestination and our volitional responsibility generates strong calm sanity in knowing, again, no one can defer, deter, or detour God’s saving sovereignty regardless of confirmed or contradicted choice.

Because predestination is God’s prerogative, we concentrate on personal volitional responsibility as we praise God for His unalterably predestined ultimate victory shared by grace through faith in Jesus.

Candidly, that paradox is embraced in enthusiastic esteem for God while acknowledging God as divine is more than we as human can comprehend.

Simply, God is God and we are not.

Part of honoring God for sharing ultimate heavenly victory and existential confidence in the meantime is loving Him by loving like Him with agape through grace and mercy.

A mentor once explained: “If you are holding back from God in any part of your life, you will not experience His full pleasure until you yield to God in every part of your life that you are holding back from Him.”

Then he would say, “I want you to take a moment and identify every part of your life that you are holding back from God.”

Finally, he challenged, “Until you yield/surrender those parts of your life to God, you will not experience His full pleasure.  Now you know why you are not filled completely with joy, peace, and calm.  You can never be completely whole and happy until you are completely His.  Now you know the antidote for what is ailing you.  As long as you are holding back any part of your life from God, you will not experience His full pleasure.”

Yes, we are saved for eternal paradise by grace through faith in Jesus; and we can experience more and more and more of His goodness/pleasure in time by yielding/surrendering more and more and more of our affections, aspirations, and actions to His prescribed will for our lives in Jesus by the book.

Among the hardest parts of our lives to yield/surrender to God is our stubborn resistance even disinterest in forgiveness.

Unlike God, we hold so tenaciously, furiously, and self-destructively to our angers, resentments, and retaliatory lusts.

Getting even, getting over, and getting away rebel against His call to get along, overcome, and reconcile through Him.

Hence, our lives are dominated by dysfunction, distance, divorce, and relational death in time with the warning of eternal consequences from God for our irregular, irascible and irreconcilable instincts enabled by emotional and intellectual rationalizations.

Again, we can be healed by discovering agape and expressing it/Him through grace and mercy: “The mercy you give to others will be the mercy you get from God…If you forgive others, you will be forgiven by God.”

Amending the aforementioned mentor’s counsel, “If you are holding back forgiveness from anyone, you will not experience God’s forgiveness.  I want you to take a moment and think of anyone that you have not forgiven.  Now you know why you are not experiencing the joy, peace, calm, and eternal security of God’s forgiveness.  Now you know the antidote for what’s ailing you.”

Sage in Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin: “God’s wisdom teaches me…when I help others, I’m really helping myself.”

It/He happens when we reclaim the bow by discovering original mercy.

Evolutionary Updates

TMP (8) contributors are B&B.

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Blessings and Love!

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Shatter the sound of silence!

Wake up!  Look up!  Stand up!  Speak up!  Act up for Jesus!

Salt!  Shine!  Leavenate!

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