Rest is Mercy!

Before moving away from the NYC area, I got the opportunity to visit the MoMA. It's a modern art museum. Although it was not my favorite museum, this picture above, of me looking at a large red canvas, reminds me of what I'd like to share today.

I read a story in the Bible about Saul and David (I Samuel 24). It's the story where King Saul was chasing David to kill him. He goes inside of a cave to relieve himself, not knowing that David is in the same cave. David sneaks up behind him, cuts off a piece of Saul's robe instead of killing Saul, his enemy. In the morning, Saul is out of the cave and across the way. Then David comes out of the cave and reveals that he could have killed Saul for his evil attempt to kill him, but instead he chose to save his life and only take a piece of Saul's robe. Saul looked down and started to weep. He then expresses to David how grateful he was for showing him mercy by not giving him what he deserved.

This made me stop and ponder the beautiful mercy of our God. Mercy is God NOT giving us what we deserve. And what's crazy is that He renews this gift of mercy every single morning. So when we wake up, It's like God makes a choice, "Today, I'm not going to give Kim what she deserves. Instead, I'm going to give her things that she DOESN'T deserve and that's Grace".

We will talk about Grace another time. The mercy of God melts me. You see, Saul was doing wrong. He was trying to murder David. He should have been punished. Yet instead, he gets to look down at his robe and see mercy.

I'm sure having a King's robe cut, makes a King look poor or ragged. I'm sure Saul having to walk around with a cut and ugliness on his robe didn't feel good or look good. However, when he saw the ugliness on his robe, he saw mercy

This reminds me of the scars and ugliness we all have attached to us. Whether these scars are caused by hurt or caused by our own sin, its still not pretty. Many of us wish we could just remove those scars so that we have no memory of them.

But I see that keeping the scars is to keep mercy attached to us. You see, the enemy wants us to look down at our ugliness, and be reminded of our sin and our pain, and imperfections. He wants us to look at them and ponder that we are worthless and filthy. However, God wants us to look down at them and see the beauty of His Mercy.

Mercy is Jesus! You see God knew that we all deserved death because of our sins, but the gift of His Mercy wouldn't allow Him to give us what we truly deserved. Instead, He placed what we deserved on His Son and had His own son punished. Mercy is because of the blood of Jesus.

The Bible says that surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives (Psalm 23) This means that if we know Jesus, we can now turn around to look and see where the cut was made on our robe, but this time we will see only Mercy. Why? Because it's mercy that's following behind us now, not our sins and cuts.

Many of us have cuts and scars behind us, just like Saul had on his robe, as it dragged behind him. Many of us think that that's what God sees when He looks at us. The enemy wants us to think that that is what God is looking at.

But God wants us to know that He can't see the scars and cuts. He can only see His Son's blood. 

This is mercy!

Looking at this picture above, reminds me of what God sees when He looks at me. Only the Red from the Blood of His Son Jesus.

I want to encourage you that if you're looking back at your past and finding yourself down, discouraged, useless, worthless, hurting, ...I encourage you to come to Jesus.

He will tell you that His blood has covered it all up from the eyes of God. God can't see it nor is He looking at it.

You can now Rest!

Sabbath was created for man not man created for Sabbath. Man needed freedom from bondage and Jesus came to be that deliverer. Now His death even frees us from the bondage of our past cuts and scars that are attached to our robes. We can now turn around and see what God sees, and that's the Red blood of His Son, Jesus!

Find Rest and share with someone who could be encouraged today