Thursday, April 26, 2012

Mercy is Strength Upside Down

gold text upside down


There is a true story told of a very athletic young man that rode a bus one day. Behind him were two rowdy men harshly behaved.
He was brown-skinned, they were pale and this was Pre-Civil Rights Movement.

The two harassed him throughout the entire bus ride: taunting and mocking him anyway they could imagine. By the time the athlete had reached his stop, he'd endured much verbal assault.Before stepping off, he reached into his coat pocket and handed them his business card.

It read:

JOE LOUIS
Professional Boxer

Real strength: showing mercy when you can just as easily crush someone.

Wielding strength for your own good is kind of like driving an SUV, it can be very easy to do—just run people over. But as followers of Christ, we have two major mandates: Love God and Love People (Mark 12:30-31), demonstrating appropriate mercy does both.

In 1 Samuel 24, David, the prophesied king of Israel, is running for his life from his former boss, Saul. Saul has thrown spears at him and threatened his life on numerous occasions. One day David finds Saul by himself, just minding his own business—an easy target. His fellow warriors tell him its just God 's favor. But instead of giving himself an easy victory and way out of stress, David shows Saul mercy, he even falls down before Saul on his knees!

“May the Lord judge between me and you, may the Lord avenge me against you, but my hand shall not be against you.”
-1 Samuel 24:12

No matter where you are today, there will always be people below you and people above you, in some aspect. The tendency is to destroy the lowers to show off to the uppers, but that's not how Jesus Christ did it.
Follow Jesus.

Welcome to the Upside Down Kingdom.

In Him,

Jean-Marc



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