I’ve been listening to a little bit of Dave Harvey’s message from our 2009 Peacemaker Conference entitled “God’s Mercy and My Marriage.” The whole thing is SO worth listening to, and I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t heard it (or give it another listen if you have). You can download it for free from our website.

Here are some of Harvey’s opening comments on mercy:

[Mercy is] an amazing, unique, exceptional word that we rarely hear talked about within the culture that is a biblical theme that starts springing at us in the book of Genesis and goes all the way through Revelation. This word is one that we must understand because we are called by God to be merciful, and that calling begins with the person sitting next to you.

Mercy addresses how God relates to us as sinners; it describes his disposition of kindness, of patience, of forgiveness towards us despite the fact that we’ve rebelled against him and can be oriented to rebelling against him still. It describes how God suffered for sinners in Jesus Christ and suffers with sinners. Mercy arms the believer with a whole new language, with a whole new vocabulary of God’s love because all of a sudden when we talk about mercy, God’s longsuffering gets put into play. Words like forbearance begin to enter the discussion. Compassion is restored to our marriage.

…We talk about the mercy of God, and we find in the cross that the Father was merciful by sending the Son to die for our sins. Without the cross, “the Father is merciful” can become the sentimental actions of a tender old deity. It’s the cross that makes mercy real because it defines what it means in the reality that God did not treat us as our sins deserved.

Harvey goes on to apply that mercy in three specific areas of marriage/relationships: mercy in kindness, mercy in covering, and mercy for weakness.  The overarching theme is this: “Mercy introduces ministry as a primary goal in marriage.”

Again, here’s the link to download the whole message.

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