Mother's Day
“Mother's Day Love & Mercy”
1 Corinthians 13
Pastor Jerry
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On this Mother’s Day, I want us to look at
“Showing Love and Mercy” in your home. The sad fact is sometimes the hardest place to show love and mercy is at home, with the people you live with all the time. In fact, we’re often harder on our family members than we are on strangers.
I’m not proud to admit this. Why is it that sometimes we say the most ungracious things to those we love the most? Does that bother you that you could be the meanest to the people in your life you love the most?
Maybe you could identify with what David said in Psalm 101:2.
“Lord, I want to live a blameless life, but how I need your help Lord, especially in my own home, where I long to act as I should.”
Let me ask you? Do you think you’re a very loving person? Let’s just have a little quiz and find out; How loving are you with your family really?
First one?
(1) When a family member gets some detail wrong while telling a story do you (
A), interrupt them and correct them publicly? or, (
B) say nothing and let it go knowing?
Second one?
(2) When a family member keeps making the same mistake over and over, (
A) do you become irritated and angry at them? (
B) Or graciously forgive them and pray for them?
Number three.
(3) When a family member is getting more attention than you think they deserve do you (
A) feel resentful and the need to bring them down? Or (
B) celebrate with them?
Number four:
(4) When a family member says or does something that you don’t understand, do you (
A) assume the best motivation for doing it? or, (
B) question motivation -think the worst?
Here’s last question
(5) Are you more polite (
A) with strangers? (
B) or with your own family?
How did you score? Maybe you need to work on this thing about
love and mercy in your family.
Mercy is Love in action. Mercy is not a feeling or an emotion. It’s a behavior. It’s a choice.
So whatever is true about love is also true about mercy. The Bible has a very famous chapter called 1 Corinthians 13 and the whole chapter defines the meaning of
real love. It gives us
15 characteristics of
real love.
These are the characteristics of real love: “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. Love is not boastful or proud. Love is not rude. Love is not self-seeking. Love is not self-centered. Love is… I love you, period. Love is not irritable or easily angered. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil. [This is real love.]
Love rejoices with the truth. Love is always supportive. [Real] love always
trusts. It is always
hopeful. Love always
perseveres and love
never gives up. Love never fails. It never ends.” These are the 15 characteristics of love.
We’re only going to look at only four of these marks of love today. Number one, the first way we can show love in our home and in our family is…
- BY OVERLOOKING IRRITATIONS & OFFENSES
Overlooking is ignoring the irritations or the offenses. You’re going to have irritations in life. Yet in 1 Corinthians 13:5,
“Love, [real love]
is not irritable or easily angered.” Anger is by far the most misunderstood and most mismanaged of all the human emotions.
Anger is not necessarily a sin. There are some things you ought to get angry about. There’s a good kind of anger and there’s a bad kind of anger.
It’s not anger that’s wrong. It’s why you’re angry and how long you stay angry. Long anger turns into resentment & bitterness and that’s a sin. When you see racial prejudice and injustice in the world or hear about abused you ought to get angry. Anger is a part of human life.
And some things are worth getting angry for. Anger is a God given capacity but you’ve got to learn to control it.
There are two wrong ways to get angry.
One is to blow up – and the other is to clam up. You’re either a skunk or you’re a turtle. They’re just both inappropriate ways of dealing with anger.
Love is not irritable or easily angered.
The Bible says that uncontrolled anger causes foolish things to happen in your life. Proverb 17:9,
“Love forgets mistakes; n
agging about them separates even close friends.” Proverb 19:11 says,
“It is to your glory to overlook an offense.” It shows spiritual maturity if you can overlook offenses. If you’re always getting your feelings hurt you need to grow up. You need to learn how to overlook an offense.
1 Thessalonians 5:15,
“Be careful that when you get on each other’s nerves you don’t snap at each other. Look for the best in each other, and always do your best to bring it out.” If we would just practice that, we’d be a whole lot happier. Look out for the best in each other and do your best to bring it out.
Look, love and mercy is hard! It requires you taking the first step, and being the first to show mercy. That’s not an easy one! Stop trying to BE right and start DOING right. Humbly accept God’s love and mercy and offer love and mercy to others. The second way you can show love and mercy to your family…
- BY BEING KIND WHEN THEY DONT DESERVE IT BUT NEED IT.
In every family we have difficult people. They’re demanding, pushy, self-centered. How do you deal with these kind of people? The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13,
“Love is patient... Love is kind... Love is always supportive.” How about you? Are you always supportive of people whether they deserve it or not? Here’s how in Proverb 19,
“A man’s wisdom gives him patience.”
Here’s the key. Learn more about what makes them tick.
Hurt people hurt people. Anytime somebody’s hurting you it’s because they’re hurting. And if you understand their hurt you’re going to be a lot more patient with them. A person’s wisdom gives them patience.
The Bible says in Proverb 3,
“Whenever you are able, do good to people who need help.” It doesn’t say,
“Do good to people who deserve help.” There are a lot of people that don’t always deserve your kindness. Which, by the way, is what God does with you.
God doesn’t give you what you deserve; God gives you what you need. That’s called mercy.
1 Thessalonians 5 says
“Don’t be hateful to people, just because they are hateful to you. Rather, be good to each other and to everyone else.” Mercy is not dependent on the other person’s response to it. You choose to show kindness and love because it is the right thing to do. The third way that we can show mercy to our family members is…
- BY LETTING GO OF PAST HURTS
1 Corinthians 13:5,
“Love keeps no record of wrongs.” Do you keep a mental record of every wrong a family member has ever done? The Bible says love doesn’t do that. When somebody hurts you, you don’t rehearse it over and over in your mind. You let it go. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13:5,
“Love is not rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges.”
It’s interesting that rude people are simply reacting to past hurts. They’re stuck in the past. And then they come and take it out on you. That’s not fair.
Hurt people hurt people. The fourth way you can show mercy to a family member is…
- BY BELIEVING GOD IS WORKING IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS
You must believe that God is working in the life of another even when you don’t see it. You trust, you believe. The Bible says you have to trust God. 1 Corinthians 13:7,
“Love always trusts, love is always hopeful and love perseveres through whatever comes.”
How do you know if you’re trusting God?
Real simple! Look at how much you pray. If you pray a lot you’re trusting God a lot. If you pray little you’re trusting little. If you’re not praying at all you’re not trusting God at all. The Bible says in Psalm 28,
“Lord, hear my prayer for mercy when I call to you for help, when I lift my hands toward your most holy place”
The Bible says,
“Love always trust, always believes, and is always hopeful.” Have confidence that God loves you even in difficult times. When we typically think of love and mercy, we think of doing kind things for others in tangible ways. But I believe the most profound way God can teach us to show love and mercy, is to pray for others.
I don’t know what you might be facing or what you’re going through right now. Some of you may feel a little hopeless this morning. You may need to turn to God’s love and God’s mercy.
There was a guy in the Bible who did this. His name was Jeremiah.
His life fell apart. But he did not give up hope because
he turned to the love and mercy of God. Lamentations 3 says this:
“I will never ever forget this awful time as I grieve over my loss. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The unfailing love of the Lord never ends! By his mercies we have been kept from complete destruction. Great is his faithfulness. His mercies begin afresh every day.”
That is the source of hope. These four things that God expects you to do with your family God does them with you every single day of your life. God forgives your mistakes, God is kind to you when you don’t deserve it. God heals your hurts when you put your trust in Christ. And God is working in your life even when you don’t feel it. This Mother’s Day will you accept the love and mercy of God for your life today…and share that love and mercy with others?
