I’m sure you know someone who is mercy motivated in your circle of friends. I have several mercy motivated people in my life and their compassion for others amazes me. I have limited compassion and theirs seems endless. To have the compassion of Jesus that flows from us, really makes us go beyond ourselves and see through the eyes of Jesus. He saw people as sheep without a shepherd. Sheep need a shepherd! In our terminology, we might say people need a leader. We need someone with vision to help us stay on the path that we were designed to walk. Another analogy might be to keep flourishing we need to have a steady flow into our lives, and a steady flow out. We need to continue being filled with the Spirit of God, and we need at the same time to be giving out of the overflow to others around us. Jesus did just that. He stayed in a state of readiness to be able to, at a moment’s notice, show compassion on someone he was near. I like to think of Jesus having all the motivational gifts, and he definitely showed mercy generously to others. If we want to act like him, even if our motivational gift isn’t mercy, we can still be merciful. I really like that right after the motivational gifts are talked about in Romans 12 that the heading in my Bible says “Behave Like a Christian”. How does a Christian behave? From Jesus’ demonstration we know that Christians are called to show mercy. That’s how we can be like Jesus.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download