the fact is the people in your life who you least want to forgive, the people in your life you least want to show mercy to are the people who need it the most. the unlovely people. the people you don’t want to love. hurt people hurt people. if somebody’s hurting you, they’re hurting on the inside. so here’s the secret of mercy – learn their background. when you find out the background of people you cut them a whole lot more slack. you’re much more gracious to them. you go, “look at what they’ve been through!” you find out the background of people and the hurts and heartaches they’ve been through you’re going to be a lot more forgiving. you stop saying, “look how far they’ve got to go!” and you start saying, “ look how far they’ve come.” if you put yourself in their shoes you might not even be that far with all the pain that they went through. you start looking at people with the eyes of JESUS. that’s mercy.
mercy is revolving door. the more you give the more you get back. matthew 5.7 (nlt), GOD blesses those who are merciful for they will be shown mercy. you want GOD to bless your life? then you start blessing others with mercy.
another way you can bless others with your words is when you express sympathy.
when you do what the bible says to do in colosians 3.12 (Gw). as holy people be sympathetic, kind, humble, gentle and patient. the bible gives us this picture. we are to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. it’s a good picture of what sympathy means. a definition of sympathy is to be able to understand and affirm somebody else’s feelings. not just their experiences but their feelings. what they’re going through at that moment. sympathy says, i affirm what your heart is going through at this moment. i affirm your problems and your pain. sympathy is very powerful because it meets two of the most basic human needs.
first of all it meets a need that every one of us have and that is the need to feel like, i am understood. someone else understands me. sympathy says, i understand what you’re going through. i understand that life is difficult right now.
sympathy also meets a second basic need we all have right now which is to have my feelings validated. to realize i’m not so strange. everybody has these feelings. i cannot tell you the times when i’ve looked across at somebody else, as a pastor, and said, “everyone feels that way.” and seen a wave of relief come over the person’s face. we all have this basic human need to know, i am not weird. it’s a good thing to know sometimes in life.
just a thought from the front porch…
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