a merciful God

Number 3 in a series on mercy.

Studying the word mercy, I see that over and over God is identified with mercy. Not only does He give mercy, He is mercy. In Psalm 145, David praises God:

The Lord is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all,
and his mercy is over all that he has made. (8−9)

And then there are these other passages:

• For the Lord your God is a merciful God. (Deuteronomy 4:31)
• For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him. (2 Chronicles 30:9)
• But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (Nehemiah 9:12)
• for you are a gracious and merciful God (Nehemiah 9:31)
• But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. (Psalm 86:15)
• The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (Psalm 103:8)
• He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and merciful. (Psalm 111:4)
• He is gracious, merciful, and righteous. (Psalm 112:4)
• Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful. (Psalm 116:5)
• Great is your mercy, O Lord (Psalm 119:156)
• I am merciful, declares the Lord (Jeremiah 3:12)
• Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love (Joel 2:13)
• Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:36)
• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3)
• God, being rich in mercy (Ephesians 2:4)

Perhaps the favorite is found in Lamentations 3 (which I cannot read without singing):

But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”

Sometimes our tendency–let me speak only for myself: sometimes my tendency when presented with a list of passages like this is to skim and think, “Yeah, yeah, I know this; tell me something I don’t know.” I believe that this is a tactic of our enemy to keep us from truly knowing God’s Word, because it is often through repetition and exposure that scriptures and ideas move from our head to our heart and become life-changing. And so, when I find myself doing that, I stop and make myself go back and read slowly, often aloud, so that I miss nothing. I would encourage you to do the same. Say out loud these verses that declare our Father’s love and mercy and let them become a part of your understanding of who God is.

Tagged as: God, gracious, love, mercy, Psalms, steadfast