Self-Care – Page 3 – Ask Jerry Mercer

The Love that Alleviates

I will open with the fact that there is a lot of talk in our country lately about unity, or unifying the people, mainly the political parties.

To have unity we must have love, so unless we as a country get back to seeking God, unity is just an ideal. Ideals are actually the root cause of what’s the matter in our society today; with social media, everybody seems to have a voice and much of that voice is causing our division.

God gives us some very sound advice in Romans 12:16-18, “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceded. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Amen!

Unless we are in tune with the Holy Spirit and following the Words of God, all of our ideals and opinions are wrong.

I have a saying, “opinions are like hindquarters, everybody has one!” All the opinions of man are no match for one word from God! Amen!

It seems social media is a good place for all the speck finders in our society, they fail to realize that they have a plank in their own vision that keeps them from seeing the power of love as it pertains to unity.

Love must be at the base of our ideals and vision if we truly have a desire to alleviate the division that is so rampant in our nation.

Love unifies vision; Jesus said to love one another 100 times in the New Testament alone, I am sure He had a reason for repeating Himself.

Loving one another attaches us to Him and prepares an opening in us to receive people just as He does.

We, as He does, must lead with grace to have a chance at unity.

God spoke to my heart something I would like to share with you, please open your heart as well: “Love is here, Love is near, Love’s in place, Love’s in My grace. Grace is good, grace is good, it is My Grace that needs understood.”

When we talk about unity we must talk about love, and when we talk about love we must talk about grace.

Grace is the unmerited love and favor from God that is the source of all the benefits we receive from Him.

Grace gives us the ability to refrain from sin. Refraining from sin would certainly help with unity, don’t you think?

When we as a nation placed “In God we trust” on our money that was a faith statement.

In 1955, (which is actually not that long ago), President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill into law that the inscription “In God we trust” would appear on all paper and coin currency.

Both political parties had the “unified” consensus and one even said, “Nothing can be more certain than that our country was founded in a spiritual atmosphere and with a firm trust in God.” WOW!

In those days our country’s freedoms were being attacked and placing, “In God we trust” on our currency gave us a constant reminder that our nation’s political and economic fortunes were tied to its spiritual faith. “Wait, what?”

Just three years later, by an act of Congress in 1957, “In God we trust” was made to be the official national motto.

I have a very obvious question at this point. What Happened?

Did opinion and greed override faith and trust? Did man’s ideas and lust for power override the provision and trust in God?

You see I believe the Bible that says, “God is Love”, and I also believe that if we inscribe this on our hearts, we can have unity.

Unity based on this would give all of us, peace of mind, grace and patience with others, and a grand vision that would catapult us into a common bond of truly trusting in God.

Without the love of God in our hearts, we have no chance of loving one another, and that would mean no chance at unity.

Let’s start a new movement in our sphere of influence today. Let’s look inside ourselves and purging all the divisive ideals and ungodly influence that is keeping us from receiving the love of God because God’s love would lead us to a unified society. Amen!

Remember that sin word we mentioned earlier? In 1 John 1:9 God gave us a remedy for that, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

We can have unity in our community, state, and country when we decide to unify ourselves with God’s plan of redemption. Here is that plan “Believe in His Son Jesus Christ and love one another”, it is that profound, but also that easy.

Only 66 years ago our congress was so unified that it made God and faith in God the base of our power and authority as a country, have we lost some of that power today?

We need to get back to God if we are ever going to have unity and have a grafting in of different branches of people to form a perfect tree. Amen!

Love that alleviates comes from a desire to become a lifeline to anyone around you that is hurting. Leaving people alone or behind cannot alleviate the affliction that God so wants to heal.

Let’s let God heal our land! Let’s help God heal our land. You see, unity is simple for those who are willing to “walk by faith” and “walk in love.”

Behold, it is good and pleasant when we walk together in unity, for there (in unity) God commands the blessing! Psalm 133:1-3 paraphrased.

If you need a faith boost today, please leave a comment and I will prayerfully respond.

If you like this content, please consider signing up for my newsletter to receive emails directly.

Scripture of encouragement and content, Romans 12:16-18, Matthew 7:3-5, Titus 2:11-12, Psalm 91:2, 1 John 4:7-11, 1 John 1:9, Hebrews 4:16, Romans 11:17-21, and Ephesians 5:1-2, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Amen!

To Believe or Not To Believe

We, as people need to break down what we believe and what we don’t believe in regards to the Word of God.

By getting quiet and looking inside ourselves, we can develop a laundry list of what we truly believe and what we don’t yet believe.

As we identify our beliefs we can make notes as to why we believe these truths, and then stay connected to the Word of God in these areas to develop into true faith.

We must get past an acceptance of the facts and move into true Biblical faith!

Mental assent is not enough to develop a lasting trust in God, a trust that will become the first course of action you choose in all situations, including emergencies.

Jesus was thrust into a creation that had a real bad destiny because of not being able to move from knowing and seeing, to believing.

The whole world at the time was in an emergency situation; sound familiar?

But God in His ever-loving compassion sent us an unexpected and immediate remedy, a legal means to recover our rights as sons of God. Amen!

Jesus Christ was sent to remediate the world by His ability to restore us to our rightful position and stop all the contamination that tries to drag us down.

To accept this Biblical fact, we must get past mental assent and receive the truth about God and The Christ, “by faith.”

You see, we can only have faith in what we truly believe and are willing to put our trust in.

By identifying our beliefs and finding our solidification in the Word of God, we become persuaded, and our beliefs are not baseless; we have a solid foundation. Amen!

“Faith is not baseless and requires our trust to remain.”!

I will break this last statement down by identifying our base, which is true faith.

True faith is rooted and grounded in the written Word of God; the Bible is the authoritative witness to our belief system.

By the authority God placed in His written Word, we have a remedy beyond all remedies. God sent His Son Jesus in the flesh as the Word!

John 1:14 says, “The Word became a human being and made His home with us. We have seen His glory. It is the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father. And the Word was full of grace and truth. Amen! NIRV translation.

This makes what we believe a very real and present desire to abide in God’s grace and truth, and this grace and truth are found in the flesh of the Word.

You see, the verb flesh as defined is actually to: initiate a foretaste of what’s to come!

This initiation gives us the living Word to increase our belief in God, and it also gives us a foretaste of our eternal life with Jesus. Amen!

The peace we attain by believing and following the living Word makes our world seem more manageable and not as chaotic.

And with God’s peace, we can truly see our future and believe that we really do have the hope that’s written in Jeremiah 29:11. It says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”

God has known His plan for us even before the world began! Amen!

What is happening around us does not have to get in us. The more flesh of the Word that we hear and read the more grace we receive, and with enough grace (the love and mercy given to us by God) nothing is impossible, which actually means all things are possible to us who believe.

Now about those things that we don’t yet believe, if they are found in the Bible, we can rest assured that if we stay with them, they will become alive to us just as the Word we do believe.

The unbelief will take on a new life and make its dwelling among us just as the Word of flesh did before.

All created things have come out of the words of God and by the Word becoming flesh. We can sum this all up with Hebrews 1:2-4, “But in these last days He has spoken to us through His Son. He is the One whom God appointed to receive all things. God also made everything through Him. The Son is the shining brightness of God’s glory. He is the exact likeness of God’s being, He uses His powerful Word to hold all things together. He provided the way for people to be made pure from sin. Then He sat down at the right hand of the King, the Majesty in heaven. So He became higher than the angels. The name He received is more excellent than theirs.” Amen!

The name above all names, I call Him, “Creator”-John 1:3, “Deliverer”-Romans 11:26, “Faithful Witness”-Revelation 1:5, “Holy and True”-Revelation 3:7, “Hope”-1 Timothy 1:1, “I AM”-John 8:58, “Last Adam”-1 Corinthians 15:45, “Life”-John 14:6, Colossians 3:4, “Living One”-Revelation 1:18, “Mighty God”-Isaiah 9:6, “Our Protection”-2 Thessalonians 3:3, “Our Redemption”-1 Corinthians 1:30, “Power of God”-1 Corinthians 1:24, “Rock”-1 Corinthians 10:4, “Savior”-Ephesians 5:23, “Son of Man”-Matthew 8:20, “Source”-Hebrews 5:9, “Truth”-John 1:14, John 14:6, “Word”-John 1:1, “Word of God”-Revelation 19:13.

Do you believe the Word? God is expecting you to!

If you need a faith boost today, please leave a comment and I will prayerfully respond.

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Scriptures of encouragement and content are found above. Please spend some time looking them up and get started on your journey towards believing.

Unbelief: A Bad Choice

During a recent sermon, I heard my pastor say, “Unbelief is a bad choice.”

I immediately looked inside myself and thought ‘Wow”, that would be true.

Every word of God we hear we are going to have an immediate choice as to whether we accept it, believe it, and put it into practice or not!

While I was pondering this profound statement and keeping it at the forefront of my mind, I did my daily Bible reading; I would read the Word of God then challenge myself as to whether I really believed it.

You see, we will be judged by God on our personal acceptance and belief in the written Word and how we line ourselves up with what it says.

While looking at John 6:28-29, this passage about Jesus being the Bread of Life, I saw Jesus’ answer to a question that was asked by what the Bible calls a crowd; here is the question: What must we do to do the works God requires? Jesus answered, “the work of God is this: to believe in the One He sent.”

As we look at His answer, we see the exact representation of how we are to do the works of God – by receiving His Son, Jesus. This actually lines up with the total gist of the Gospel message and the goal of salvation for all who believe. Amen!

With this fresh in my heart, it caused 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17 to ring out louder to me than it ever has. In verse 13, the apostle Paul says, “We are thankful that God chose you to be among the first to experience salvation, a salvation that came through the Spirit who makes you holy and by your belief in the truth.” Amen!

So we are chosen to experience salvation through the Holy Spirit, and by our belief in the truth!

I will explain this last sentence, which is really self-explanatory, “the Holy Spirit makes us Holy”, and by our belief in or choice of the truth, we are set apart for God, by and through the Holy Spirit.

In John 16:13, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth; “but when He the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” Amen!

Now let’s take all of this back to our title that says, “Unbelief is a bad choice.” We received our salvation by choosing to believe in our heart that Jesus is the Christ, and also believing that God raised Him from the dead, and by doing so we overrode the unbelief that would have held us back.

Everything after choosing Jesus to be our Lord and Savior should be easier to believe, we won the debate about Jesus being our salvation, and now we are on a journey of belief as we read and hear the Word of God.

We should watch what we say in regards to believing. I have heard people say, “I can’t believe that.” First, that is an untrue statement, we choose not to believe, and second, “unbelief is a bad choice.”

By receiving salvation, we received a special gift from God, and He gave it to us when we heard the Good News, the Gospel, about the Christ, Who He sent so that we can have, and enjoy, life here on earth as well as eternal life with the Father in glory. Amen!

Our salvation is a gift to be unwrapped from faith to faith; we experience more of our gift by believing more of God’s Word.

If at some point we stop believing, then our unbelief will keep us from un-wrapping the gift. I don’t know about you but I have never half opened a present, and spent the rest of my life wondering what was inside!

The Bible says in James 1:22-24, that if we don’t put what we believe into practice, we will forget about the gift we received, as in looking at ourselves in a mirror and then forgetting what we looked like. Let us hold fast to our ever-loving, ever-giving Gift. Amen!

The Gift that gives us not only salvation but also healing, prosperity, joy, peace, hope, long life, and all the other good things that choosing to believe will provide.

We choose to believe because “Unbelief is a bad choice.”

I will end with this wonderful blessing found in 2 Thessalonians 2:15-17; “With these things in mind brothers and sisters, may our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father, who loved us and in His special favor gave us everlasting comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and give you strength in every good thing you do and say.” Amen!

If you need a faith boost today, please leave a comment and I will prayerfully respond.

If you like this content, please consider signing up for my newsletter to receive emails directly.

Scriptures of encouragement and content: Mark 9:17-24, John 6:28-29, 1 John 3:23, 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17, John 16:13, Romans 10:8-11, Romans 1:16-17,

James 1:21-25 TPT, “So this is why we abandoned everything morally impure and all forms of wicked conduct, instead with a sensitive spirit we absorb God’s Word, which has been implanted within our nature, for the Word of Life has power to continually deliver us. Don’t just listen to the Word of Truth and not respond to it, for that is the essence of self-deception. So always let His Word become like poetry written and fulfilled by your life! If you listen to the Word and don’t live out the message you hear, you become like the person who looks in the mirror of the Word to discover the reflection of his face in the beginning. You perceive how God sees you in the mirror of the Word, but then you go out and forget your divine origin. But those who set their gaze deeply into the perfect law of liberty are fascinated by and respond to the truth they hear and are strengthened by it–they experience God’s blessing in all they do!”

Walking on the Water

Can we as people really step out on the H2O? Is there enough buoyancy in faith to sustain us above the pull of our body weight?

The disciple Peter found out about faith and buoyancy as we see written in Matthew 14:22-32 in the Holy Bible.

As the story goes, Jesus came walking on the water to the boat full of disciples. The sight of this miraculous happening terrified them; they thought they were seeing a ghost!

But Jesus immediately said, “take courage, it is I, don’t be afraid”.

This statement from Jesus gave Peter enough faith in his own words to say to Jesus (who was still out on the water, by the way), “Lord if it’s You tell me to come to You on the water”.

Peter’s faith in what he heard the Lord say propelled his faith into buoyancy! And Peter’s faith gave Jesus the opportunity to allow action to correspond to his faith by saying, “Come”.

At this point, there is nothing left to do except, get out of the boat! And that’s just what Peter did.

So Peter stepped out of the boat onto the water, “by faith”, weight and wind defying faith – buoyancy faith!

As long as Peter was looking at the source of his faith, I will say that again, “as long as Peter was looking at the source of his faith”, he was walking on the water. Amen!

Peter was walking toward Jesus on the water, then he noticed the wind and the waves, or natural happenings, he took his eyes off his source and looked at the obstacles… UT OH!

Peter focused on the obstacles and began to sink; here is where the graciousness of our Lord shines!

I have a personal story about God’s graciousness that I will share at this point.

About 14 years ago my wife and I left home and family to set out to serve God at a higher level, in another state.

My wife and I were moved “by faith” we knew there was much more about the Trinity than we were walking in.

We sought to learn about faith and how to be led by the Spirit of God. We soon found out there was a lot about faith that we did not yet understand. We started looking at the wind and the waves in our life; we took our eyes off of our Source!

As we began sinking, I remember asking God this question, “God what’s happening, why are we sinking, how did we fail”?

The next words from God were a marker time in my faith journey. God spoke to me, not in an audible voice but inside my spirit, saying “Peter was the only one to get out of the boat, I had to help him back in”!

This phrase still ministers to me some 14 years later. This is one of the most gracious times I have ever had with the Lord. I felt comforted, I felt loved, and I felt the caress of a Father, a Brother, and a friend. Amen!

God saw our stepping out as a faith victory, not a faith failure. Just as with Peter in verse 30, he cried out, “Lord save me”, and the Bible says in verse 31 that Jesus immediately reached out and caught Peter and saved him from drowning.

This was not the end of Peter’s story, nor was it the end of mine. You see, Jesus is thrilled when we trust Him and step out in faith. But His words to Peter, me, and you after we allow doubt to derail our faith is, “you of little faith, why did you doubt”.

Jesus wants us living out of the boat;

trusting Him with our every move
walking where few dare try
accomplishing what most fear
And taking courage that He will do everything He said! Amen!

Do you trust Him, friend? He is faithful, trustworthy, and true!

When we step out, Jesus steps in. In Him all obstacles disappear, all waves flatten out, and “by faith” we have what He says.

What we need to say as we walk this faith walk is found in verse 33, “Truly you are the Son of God”, and I trust you!

Let’s walk on the water today. If enough of us get out of the boat we can change our churches, our communities, our states, and yes even our country.

Walk “by Faith” today! Trust Jesus to change your life today. He is so gracious and faithful, let’s join with Him today.

If you need a faith boost today, please leave a comment and I will prayerfully respond.

If you liked this content, please consider signing up for my newsletter to receive emails directly.

Scriptures of encouragement and content: Matthew 14:22-32, James 2:18, James 1:23-25, James 4:6, Hebrews 2:11, Matthew 21:21, Isaiah 26:3, 2 Corinthians 5:7, and Isaiah 30:18 TPT, ” For this reason the Lord is still waiting to show His favor to you so He can show you His marvelous love. He waits to be gracious to you. He sits on His throne ready to show mercy to you. For Yahweh is the Lord of justice, faithful to keep His promises. Overwhelmed with bliss are all who entwine their hearts in Him, waiting for Him to help them. Amen and Wow!