Joyce Meyer - How Do I Get Mercy? (08/18/2019)
This brief message focuses on the vital difference between trying to "get" God's mercy through effort and simply "receiving" it as a gift. Emphasizing that mercy must be personally accepted to bring healing, it encourages believers to pause after prayer, actively receiving forgiveness and grace rather than remaining stuck in self-condemnation.
Receiving vs. Getting God's Mercy
God is merciful. I'm not going to give you any more scriptures on that. There's hundreds of them in the Bible. If you want to read any more, just read Psalms. God is merciful. But we have to learn how to receive God's mercy. And I could stand here and talk about this for a long time, because there are people, even in this place tonight, even though you believe God is merciful, and you believe that God gives mercy to people, you really have not yet received God's mercy for yourself. God gives it, we receive it, we let it heal us, then it can flow through us. But just to say God is merciful isn't good enough.
Now, let's talk about two words, the word get and the word receive. We get mixed up. God never tells us to get anything. You cannot find a scripture that talks about one of the promises of God that says go get that promise. It either says you've got it, you have it, you are redeemed, you have been sanctified. And so God wants us to believe we already have it, or he wants us to receive it by faith. We say things like this, "Did you get saved?" But the Bible says, "to as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God." Paul said to the Corinthians, "Have you received the Holy Spirit?" We receive from God.
The Big Difference Between Get and Receive
You say, "Well Joyce, what's the big deal?" Well, here's the big deal. The word "get," if you look it up in a dictionary, means to obtain by struggle and effort. You can't get God's mercy. You can't buy God's mercy. The only thing you can do is receive it. To receive means to open up and as a receptacle to take in what's being offered. Wow. Well, "God, I messed up again. I repent, Lord. I turn away from it. I don't want to act like that. I'm so sorry. Thank you for your forgiveness. I receive your mercy." I think that we need to take a little more time receiving when we pray.
We pray, "Oh God forgive me, God forgive me, oh God forgive me, forgive me, forgive me." But we never take the time. Very often we don't take the time to just stop. Just take even 30 seconds and just sit quietly in the presence of God and just believe, "I am receiving that forgiveness now. My sin is washed away. God is giving me mercy." You got to receive the mercy of God. When mercy is extended to you, do you receive it or are you still kind of mad at yourself? It's often difficult to just receive mercy because we try to deserve it and you can't deserve it. It's an unreasonable, radical, ridiculous gift that nobody can make any sense out of and there's only one thing that you can do and that's receive it.
There are people in here tonight that you need, you need to leave this place and you need to go home and you need to take some time receiving. Come on, it'll change your life.