The mercy of God is very important and essential in the life of every believer and it’s a must to understand how to receive it. This mercy from God responds to the voice of thanksgiving through His outstretched arm that turns any situation into that which God intends.
I remember last year, when Reverend Mark Hankins came for WAFBEC; he painted a picture of how he went hunting with a pastor-friend. They were about two hours in the bush and there was no animal in sight. He said at some point as the day began to break his friend then started making a funny sound. And so he asked him ‘what are you doing?’ His friend kept making the funny sound and said to him ‘get ready’. The next thing that happened was that an animal they had been waiting for appeared and his friend said ‘I told you’ and he fired his weapon. Later he asked his friend ‘what was the meaning of the sound?’ He said ‘the animal they hunted feeds on a particular type of small creature and when that creature is injured that is the way they cry and because they feed on the ones that are weak, once they hear that cry they sense there is weakness in the environment and they come out’. Just like in the illustration above there is a sound that makes the devil come out which is the sound of murmuring or complaining. But then there is the sound that God hears and He comes on the scene; that sound is the sacrifice of praise. That is the fruit of a person’s lips, giving thanks unto His name.
Hebrews 4:16 says, “let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need”. When a person comes up to the throne of grace and as Paul said, he obtains mercy. The next thing that happens is that you find grace to help in a time of need. God will always respond to your call whenever you are in need or in distress. Once an individual cries out to God just believe the first response of God is to help you. But rather a lot of people are waiting for answers instead of Giving God thanks. They forget that God will never forsake His own. Isaiah 49:13-16 says, ‘Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains: for the LORD hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted. But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me’.
In other words God is saying, ‘the cords that bind me to you are deeper than those that bind a woman to her child’. The same way a woman is unlikely to forget that she carried a child in her womb for nine months and gives birth; is the same way He said He can NEVER forget us. This means if you cry out for mercy, He is going to respond.
Now the mistake that we make is when we cry out for mercy, we confuse mercy with grace. It is when you obtain mercy that you will then find grace to help in a time of need. Now what is mercy? Mercy is when God shows up in the life of an individual and He causes His face to shine into his heart. Therefore, when an individual seeks the mercy of God he will not look on the outside for prove rather he will respond to the situation with the voice of thanksgiving and then God will respond by moving on the outside in a miraculous way that is beyond and above what we asked or think.
Pastor ‘Poju Oyemade