Mercy Fellowship Sermons

Our journey will be long and will include difficulty. We will hurt others and be hurt by others. We will need to pursue humility and at times we will be humbled. When broken, restoration will require repentance and reconciliation. While weak we can have courage to endure in the mercy and grace of God.

We are too easily impressed, because we can be impressed with ourselves. This is not a path that will lead to glory or contentment. Central to this letter is the paradox of how we see and relate to our own insufficiency. To understand how we endure the Christians life we need to experience strength through weakness.  

Not all news is “Good News”. Not all leaders are worthy of following. Wisdom and discernment are essential to effectively evaluate what we hear and who we respond to. We need help cultivating pure desire with sincere discipline. When desire and discipline meet it creates enduring devotion. 

There is a war being waged for your joy on numerous fronts. Spiritual forces, comparison with others, actual opponents, even our own thoughts at times seek our defeat. Attacks can be subtle as pride seeks to overwhelm our sense of self and how we engage with others. We are weak; we need a strength beyond our ourselves to combat crippling pride with courageous humility.

Good circumstances and worthy causes can spur us to momentary generosity. However, when desire and discipline are lacking, we can easily become sporadic or even stingy in our giving. For a culture of generosity to be cultivated, specific habits, attributes, and motivations are necessary for enduring giving. 

We need. We desire. We take. When we are needy or greedy, we close our hands on what we have out of fear we will not have enough. To have our hands opened to give, share, and be generous in ways which cost us requires courage. This courage is birthed from being reorientated to see what we have been given.

Affliction comes in many forms. We experience grief for many different reasons. While the actions of others can discourage us, it is often our choices which cause us the greatest pain. Where we are derailed by the impact of sin, repentance is needed to return us to the path of endurance. 

We have strong internal desires and powerful external influences competing for our attention and affection. Some helpful, some harmful. What does endurance look like in a world opposed to God? How can we stay actively engaged with the world without engaging in active sin? 

We know shame. We know suffering. We know separation. These are part of the consequences of living in our imperfect world. We cannot bear the dishonor of sin we’ve caused, or endured from, others. We need a salvation outside our ourselves effective to cover our shame, clean our souls, and change our relationships. 

We live for ourselves. Self-improvement and self-fulfillment are strong forces propelling our engagement with the world. Our desire for acceptance and focus on outward appearances drives, and often distorts our interactions with others. All the energy directed towards us leads to emptiness and exhaustion. We need a new compulsion.

Deep in our souls we know we are made for eternity, yet our current physical bodies are anything but capable of enduring forever. We know our lives are finite yet none of us are ready to be finished. We believe today matters but we earnestly desire something more and better tomorrow.

What we see about ourselves and experience in the world does not always seem enduring, strong, or valuable. At a certain point, as we age, we begin to see greater decay not greater glory. As we experience difficulty, we seem weaker not stronger. As we experience loss, we can lose vision of what is valuable. To be prepared for eternity we need a power worthy to endure.

We can be easily satisfied with what we have or do if we think it “works” for us. When something new comes along that is intrinsically better in comparison we rightly want to upgrade. Yet, at times, we settle for the comfort of what we know, even if it is inferior to what is now available. We need courage to embrace the glory of what God has for us today and forsake what has become obsolete.

Few things are more able to change our experience in a room, a home, even a community like an aroma. Nearly nothing can contain an aroma from spreading beyond its original source to impact the environment around it. Our lives, actions, and attitudes contribute to the aroma of all we are involved with. 

We are not meant to be alone. Isolation reduces our ability to endure and robs us of joyful connection with others. We are made for community, yet when we are with other imperfect people there is always the opportunity to both experience harm or to harm others. For a flourishing community to endure it takes great courage. 

There are few things in life we find truly reliable. We plan, prepare, and promise but we are rarely able to provide a guarantee of significant flourishing on our own. If we are going to have courage, we need our faith placed where endurance can be guaranteed. 

We often think of endurance in terms of individual character not collective interdependence. When afflictions come, we begin to look inward hoping we have the strength to endure. Yet when our hope is in ourselves, or even others, we will be disappointed. We need our gaze shifted.

Preaching in Athens should have been a career highlight leading to significant impact in the city, region, and beyond. He studied the culture, made connections with influential people, and was given a significant and intrigued audience, only to be laughed out of the joint. While a few were persuaded, what could have been a great victory was both a personal disgrace and defeat.