Foundations of faith
Loading Lamentations 3:22-23…
These lines sit in the middle of a book of ruins. Jeremiah is not describing a good season, he is describing God. Mercy that arrives new each morning is not a feeling he worked up but a fact he chose to say aloud when everything else was gone.
A prayer from this passage
Father, I am not consumed, and that is Your mercy and not my strength. Meet me with new mercy this morning. Make me merciful to others in the measure I have received from You.
Key truth
Mercy is God withholding the judgement we deserve and renewing His compassion daily toward us.
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Questions people are asking
God is the one living Creator who made everything and depends on nothing, and Scripture answers this question mainly by telling us his character rather than by defining his substance. When God described himself to Moses he said he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness and truth, and yet will by no means clear the guilty. The New Testament adds that this God is finally known in Jesus Christ, who has made him known.
Scripture defines sin as lawlessness, as falling short of God's glory, and as failing to do the good we know we should do. It is not only a list of bad actions but a condition of the heart that produces them, and it is first against God rather than only against people. Scripture also says all have sinned, that its wage is death, and that God is faithful to forgive those who confess.
Biblical forgiveness is the decision to release a debt you have every right to collect, made because God released yours. It is not pretending the wrong was small, and it does not always mean reconciliation or renewed trust. It usually begins as an act of obedience and becomes a feeling later, often much later.
Yes. Scripture repeatedly says that God's forgiveness reaches sins as scarlet, murder, persecution of the church and open blasphemy, provided the sinner turns to him in genuine repentance and faith. The one sin the Bible treats as unforgivable is a settled, final rejection of the Spirit's own witness to Christ, and the very fact that a person is troubled about having committed it is itself strong evidence they have not.
Grace is God's undeserved favor toward sinners, shown supremely in that while we were dead in trespasses and sins, he made us alive together with Christ. It is not a reward for the good we have done or a boost for the good we are trying to do. It is God's own kindness, freely given through Christ, that saves us when we could not save ourselves and keeps teaching us to live for him afterward.
A single morning's reading, if you would rather not begin a whole plan.
Daily reading · 30 Days in the Psalms · Repentance
David wrote this after his sin with Bathsheba was exposed, and he does not soften what he did or bargain with God. He simply asks for mercy, for a clean heart, and for the joy of salvation to be restored, which is the shape every honest confession takes.
Daily reading · The Gospel of John in 21 Days · Freedom
Jesus refuses to condemn a woman his accusers wanted to stone, and later tells the crowd that the truth will set them free. Both moments reveal the same thing: Jesus deals in mercy and truth together, never one without the other.
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