Remembering God's mercies
- Jacob Ninan
When we first come to the Lord the thing that grips us most is the mercy and love He has shown to sinners like us. We are full of gratitude to Him for His amazing grace towards wretches like us. But so often this gratitude cools down as we move forward from the day of our conversion, learn greater truths and get involved in Christian activities. We tend to take the mercy of God for granted. Little by little our eagerness to please Jesus disappears and our approach towards sin and disobedience becomes more 'practical'! Backsliding has set in.
One of the things we can do to counter this tendency is to take time now and then to sit quietly before the Lord and think of the numberless mercies He has shown to us. The reason why Jesus established the practice of 'the Lord's table' (or communion or breaking of bread) is that every time we do it we can remember and give thanks for His death on the cross on our behalf and what it has accomplished for us (1Co.11:24,25). The whole chain of His mercies starts from the cross.
But we have received much more from His hands than His forgiveness. The eyes of our Father see every blemish and imperfection that is in us, but His heart covers them all up with love. How patient He is towards us even though we take such a long time to learn His lessons!
Day by day we experience His mercies in many forms. There is not one child of His who cannot testify to miraculous escapes, protection in unexpected ways, and divine provisions when we were at our wit's ends. Maybe we didn't notice many of them as we sped along life's highway, but when we sit down and think about them we see that there they were anyway.
Perhaps for some of us the way has been extremely hard and perplexing. But even then we cannot but admit that we too have experienced His miraculous interventions now and then.
The most marvelous thing about His mercy is that it is something we don't deserve. If we should have been sent to hell for but one of our sins, we should have been sent a thousand times. If the 'prodigal son' had been received back by the father after his backsliding, our Father has received us back countless number of times!
Once we start thinking of His mercies, can we but love Him? The closer we walk with Him, doesn't the wonder of His mercies strike us much more strongly? Won't we want to serve Him and proclaim His mercies to the others too?