Daily Bible Reading Plans to help you read and understand God’s Word

Scripture Reading: Matthew 5:7, Psalm 103:8-10, Matthew 18:21-35, Luke 6:27-36

There are days when I wake up on the wrong side of the bed and decide that the world is against me. Every little annoyance or thing that interrupts whatever I am trying to accomplish that day feels unforgivable. I am so focused on myself that I lose sight of mercy for others. 

We all wrestle with eyes focused inward which limits our supply of mercy. When someone cuts us off in traffic, we feel unforgiving. When a friend hurts our feelings, we decide to remove them from our social circle. When our spouse doesn’t listen to our request for help with the house chores, we punish them with the silent treatment. Our day is filled with intentional and unintentional wrongs done to us. It’s a symptom of the sinful reality we live in. 

Hardening our hearts is a choice we make, and withholding relational closeness is a weapon we all can wield. Yet there is another way...

When we read Jesus’s challenging message, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7), we are confronted by our own relationship with mercy. We know that God also could have withheld relational closeness from us. When we have wronged God, it separates us from Him. But through His mercy, He comes close: “He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our iniquities” (Psalm 103:10). When we know more deeply that we deserve punishment in comparison to the mercy we have been given from God, it changes how we show mercy to others.

When my mercy feels limited, God’s mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23).

When I feel wronged and want to withhold forgiveness, God tells me to forgive seventy times seven (Matthew 18:22). 

When I want to return the hurt, God asks me to do good to those who hate me and bless those who curse me (Luke 6:27). 

The more we choose to see God’s mercy for us and the gift of a right relationship with Him, the more we can extend mercy to others. 

To know God’s care for us and His never-ending extension of His grace is to live in the freedom of His love. How might God be asking you to extend mercy to someone else? And what joy do we have to gain when we do? May we press in, praise God for His mercy, and offer the gift to someone else this season.

Written by Bailey Hurley