When Mercy Found Me

Yesterday, my friend Leah shared about how mercy found her on a bathroom floor. 

As I read her beautiful, vulnerable, honest words, my head was nodding and my heart was swelling. I praised the God who crashed through her walls on that bathroom floor, because He's the same God who crashed through mine in a city college gymnasium. 

I've told this story before on the blog, multiple times in fact. But it's my absolute favorite story to tell, and so in case you haven't heard it, or in case you want to re-hear it, today I share the story of when mercy found me. 

I woke up on January 1st, 2012 around 6AM on the couch of a house I had only been to to celebrate NYE the night before. There was enough champagne left in my system to hold off the inevitable hangover, but it wasn't enough to erase the memory of how I had spent the first few hours of the new year. The time spent crying in a bathroom due to finding out a freshly-ex-boyfriend was in a new relationship. Again. 

It wasn't the first time this had happened. As a matter of fact, it was almost humerous how regular of an occurrence this was. It seemed as though every relationship in the past 3 years had ended this way, replaced in a matter of days. It was enough to kill a girl's hope, for sure. Not only kill her hope, but kill any shred of self-worth that was left from the prior heart break. 

If you pull out your iPhone, open up that calendar ap, and scroll back a few years, you'll notice that January 1st, 2012 fell on a Sunday. And thank the good Lord that it did. 

I had made arrangements to go to church with a friend that Sunday, my first time in longer than I could count. I was checking out a church that I had never been to before, but had heard incredible things. As soon as I woke up on that couch, my heart was aching to get in that building. It was probably aching for other reasons as well, but something inside of me knew that I needed to hear the word of God. 

The 4 hours between 6AM and 10AM felt like forever. It was just enough time for the hangover and shame to sink in, both were wrapped around me like a thick blanket when I walked into that gymnasium-turned-church. 

The worship music started, and as I looked to my left and right, I saw people reaching out to the Lord. It gave me permission to do what felt so counter-intuitively natural to me, and my arms shot up towards the ceiling. I felt His presence for what very well may have been the first time in my entire life, and I reached for it with every fiber of my being. 

The words "I'm desperate for You" repeated over and over and over again in my mind. I have never felt more broken in my life, but I have also never felt more hopeful. The gravity of the fact that I had been living my life in entirely the wrong way sat heavy on my shoulders, but with it, came the life-giving freedom of realizing there was a different way. This wasn't the first time I surrendered my life to Jesus, but it was the first time that 

I fully let go. 

Tears were streaming down my face, my head was throbbing from hangover world, my wonderful friend was praying words over me that I'll never remember, mercy & grace hit me like a ton of bricks, and to this day, my life has never been the same. 

Mercy found me in a hungover, heart-broken state in a college gymnasium. 

Where did mercy find you? 

31days // Mercy & Grace

So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. 

// Hebrews 4:16 //

For a really long time, I didn't understand the difference between mercy and grace. I knew they were both good things from God, but that's about it. I thought maybe they were synonyms, but in the past few years I have learned that they are very, very different. 

Understanding what these things are, and how our God so freely gives them, has made the world of a difference in my pursuit of purity. I want to take some time today to dive into these things, and come back to that verse listed above to see what God says about them. 

{Happy Saturday, by the way!}

{mer-cy}

-kind or forgiving treatment of someone who could be treated harshly- (source)

I have come to understand that mercy is not getting what we deserve.  The fact of the matter is, we are all human. We all mess up, though our mess ups may look different. But the Bible clearly states that 

everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard. {Romans 3:23}

God has every reason to punish us, ya'll, and yet He doesn't. He has every reason to give up on us due to our repeated shortcomings, and yet He doesn't. He had every reason to keep His son, as we were a rebellious creation, and yet He didn't. 

He doesn't punish us, because He doesn't see our sin. He never gives up on us, because of His love. And He didn't keep His son, He sent Him. 

That, my friends, is mercy. We could be treated very, very harshly, but instead, are treated with kindness and forgiveness. 

{grace}

-the free and unmerited favor of God- (source)

You see, grace and mercy are far from synonyms; they are opposites. While mercy is not getting what we deserve, grace is getting what we don't deserve. God doesn't just give us mercy. Mercy is saving us from an eternity away from Him, and God goes far beyond just that. He gives us Himself, now, as sinners. And that is grace. 

God has no reason to dwell with us, and yet He does. He has no reason to keep and keep and keep and keep forgiving us, and yet He does. He has no reason to promise to abide with us forever, through all of our shortcomings, and yet He does. 

We didn't earn any of these things, and we never could; that's why they are unmerited. But regardless, He does dwell with us, He does forgive us, and He does abide with us. 

With understanding of these two incredible gifts of God, we can go back to that verse in Hebrews and understand the power of it. There's one other word that is bolded (pun unintentional, but I'll take it!): boldly. 

These gifts are ours as children of God. We don't need to timidly approach Him anymore, we can boldly approach Him! We can confidently approach Him, knowing that these gifts will be ours for the taking. 

I have finally come to understand that I will never deserve these gifts. They are not dependent on my obedience, that's just not how God works. And praise Him! Because understanding this has freed me from striving, when the striving is unnecessary. And quite honestly, the striving doesn't get me anywhere. 

What does get me somewhere is understanding the amazing and unfailing love of our God. A God who so freely gives mercy and grace, even though we don't deserve it. 

The pursuit of purity may be a challenging one at times, but when I grab hold of God and who He is, He will never fail to help me. 

Be blessed, loves. :)