Increasingly, I seek to live at the mercy of God.
To live at the mercy of God is to fully allow God to be God. Instead, we typically seek to make ourselves God, either by redefining the rules or by imagining ourselves to be all-good.
An obvious way of usurping God's place, is the flagrant disregard of His sovereignty. A less obvious way, is to try so hard in the spiritual life that we expect a spiritual A+ and all of the attached benefits. It is to refuse to be genuine and take the risks God asks, because we are clinging to the life path that we think is earning us a spiritual A+
If we sincerely seek to live in His mercy, then:
1) We will avoid the extreme of presuming upon God's grace. After all, if we are sincerely living in a posture of petitioning God for His mercy, we will not want to deliberately offend Him.
2) We will avoid the extreme of Pharisee-ism, a way of living religion whereby we "know" are perfect by virtue of crossing every religious i-and-t. If we think we are perfect, perhaps we are not taking enough risks for God. The shepherd should smell of the sheep; do we? Are we are living in a way that is too separate from the world? Jesus ate and drank at table with sinners. Are we so preoccupied with our spotlessness that we can not do the same? Perhaps there are people God would like us to reach that we are too "perfect" for. Perhaps there is a life path God is calling us to, but we are too afraid of the possibility of sinning that we stay safely on the sidelines of life. If we truly seek to live in God's mercy, we will avoid a mentality by which we try to play it safe all the time.
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