Difference Between Grace And Mercy Quotes

All the world, every creature. He put no difference between men in this respect, though you meet with them in the likeness of beasts, and devils never so wicked, never so abominable; as long as they are creatures, reach out the cup of salvation to them, if they will drink; open the treasures of grace to them, if they will receive them; agree with them for nothing but faith for justification, and profession of it for their salvation.

God in the Spirit revealed in Jesus Christ, calls us by grace to be renewed in the image of our Creator, that we may be one in divine love for the world. Today is the day God cares for the integrity of creation, wills the healing and wholeness of all life, weeps at the plunder of earth’s goodness. And so shall we. Today is the day God embraces all hues of humanity, delights in diversity and difference, favors solidarity transforming strangers into friends. And so shall we. Today is the day God cries with the masses of starving people, despises growing disparity between rich and poor, demands justice for workers in the marketplace. And so shall we. Today is the day God deplores violence in our homes and streets, rebukes the world’s warring madness, humbles the powerful and lifts up the lowly. And so shall we. Today is the day God calls for nations and peoples to live in peace, celebrates where justice and mercy embrace, exults when the wolf grazes with the lamb. And so shall we. Today is the day God brings good news to the poor, proclaims release to the captives, gives sight to the blind, and sets the oppressed free. And so shall we.

RUSH HOUR   So many of us find the morning as a rush hour. Various family members scurry in different directions with various needs and diverse timetables. One has lost a sock; another can’t find last night’s homework. One needs a sack lunch; another needs lunch money. One leaves with a kiss, another with a shout, and another needs encouragement to open her eyes as she stumbles out the door. A “quiet time” in the morning to center ourselves and to renew our relationship with our Heavenly Father stands in sharp contrast. Carving out that time for yourself may be your supreme challenge of the day, but it is an effort worth its weight in gold, as so aptly stated by Bruce Fogarty: THE MORNING HOUR Alone with God, in quiet peace, From earthly cares, I find release; New strength I borrow for each day As there with God, I stop to pray. Alone with God, my sins confess’d, He speaks in mercy, I am blest. I know the kiss of pardon free, I talk to God, He talks to me. Alone with God, my vision clears, I see my guilt, the wasted years. I plead for grace to walk His way And live for Him, from day to day. Alone with God no sin between, His lovely face so plainly seen; My guilt all gone, my heart at rest With Christ, my Lord, my soul is blest. Lord, keep my life alone for Thee; From sin and self, Lord, set me free. And when no more this earth I trod, They’ll say, “He walked alone with God.”5   BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD; I WILL BE EXALTED AMONG THE NATIONS, I WILL BE EXALTED IN THE EARTH! PSALM 46:10 NKJV

The thought turned him topsy-turvy. It seemed to summarize the whole worthless way of the world--if there was one. And versions of it began to flutter wildly through his head. You have to look round to see straight. Good enough. Useful. And the rough places plain. But all that's geometry. But it measures the earth. You have to go slow to catch up. Eat to get thin? no, but fast to grow fat, that was a fine one. Then lose to win? fail to succeed? Risky. Stop to begin. The form made noiseless music--lumly lum lum or lum-lee-lee lum--like fill to empty, every physical extreme. Die to live was a bit old hat. But default to repay. And lie to be honest. He liked the ring of that. Flack! I'm white in order to be black. Sin first and saint later. Cruel to be kind, of course, and the hurts in the hurter--that's what they say--a lot of blap. That's my name, my nomination: Saint Later. Now then: humble to be proud; poor to be rich. Enslave to make free? That moved naturally. Also multiply to subtract. Dee dee dee. Young Saint Later. A list of them, as old as Pythagoras had. Even engenders odd. How would that be? Eight is five and three. There were no middle-aged saints--they were all old men or babies. Ah, god--the wise fool. The simpleton sublime. Babe in the woods, roach in the pudding, prince in the pauper, enchanted beauty in the toad. This was the wisdom of the folk and the philosopher alike--the disorder of the lyre, or the drawn-out bow of that sane madman, the holy Heraclitus. The poet Zeno. The logician Keats. Discovery after discovery: the more the mice eat, the fatter the cats. There were tears and laughter, for instance--how they shook and ran together into one gay grief. Dumb eloquence, swift still waters, shallow deeps. Let's see: impenitent remorse, careless anxiety, heedless worry, tense repose. So true of tigers. Then there was the friendly enmity of sun and snow, and the sweet disharmony of every union, the greasy mate of cock and cunt, the cosmic poles, war that's peace, the stumble that's an everlasting poise and balance, spring and fall, love, strife, health, disease, and the cold duplicity of Number One and all its warm divisions. The sameness that's in difference. The limit that's limitless. The permanence that's change. The distance of the near at home. So--to roam, stay home. Then pursue to be caught, submit to conquer. Method--ancient--of Chinese. To pacify, inflame. Love, hate. Kiss, kill. In, out, up, down, start, stop. Ah . . . from pleasure, pain. Like circumcision of the heart. Judgement and mercy. Sin and grace. It little mattered; everything seemed to Furber to be magically right, and his heart grew fat with satisfaction. Therefore there is good in every evil; one must lower away to raise; seek what's found to mourn its loss; conceive in stone and execute in water; turn profound and obvious, miraculous and commonplace, around; sin to save; destroy in order to create; live in the sun, though underground. Yes. Doubt in order to believe--that was an old one--for this the square IS in the circle. O Phaedo, Phaedo. O endless ending. Soul is immortal after all--at last it's proved. Between dead and living there's no difference but the one has whiter bones. Furber rose, the mosquitoes swarming around him, and ran inside.

Church leaders often mistakenly think of church culture as primarily a combination between articulated beliefs and the expressions of those beliefs. By doing so, leaders fail to look deeper to the first layer of culture. They fail to grasp the actual beliefs and actual shared values beneath the surface. Too many church leaders are betting the farm that church culture is a simple matter of “what we say” plus “what we do.” The strategy for changing culture, if this was the case, is then quite simple: If we don’t like what people are doing, then we simply need to say something different. This tragic error assigns organizational culture (and changing it) to the power of positive thinking and some form of “name it and claim it” theology. For the observant, there is likely a nagging suspicion that church culture, and the way to change, is something more. Culture is much more than what we say and do. Culture is formed by what we truly believe and value over a sustained period of time. If the stated beliefs of a church are at odds with the actual beliefs, the actual beliefs win. The actual yet unstated beliefs speak louder than the stated ones, if the two are at odds. Some examples may be helpful. If the stated doctrine of the church is that all believers are priests and ministers because our great High Priest has made us priests through His death, yet the culture of the church values only “professional ministers”—the culture will trump the doctrinal confession. A pastor preaching Ephesians 4:11–12 one time will not automatically remove the unrealistic and unbiblical expectation that the pastor is the one who does the ministry. If a stated belief of the church is that no one has anything to offer to stand holy before God, yet the actual beliefs are that we somehow contribute to our standing with God by our religious goodness, the culture will be one that does not allow for openness and confession. And someone who admits a struggle will be unlikely to experience mercy expressed from another. A graceless culture overpowers a grace-filled confessional statement. If the stated doctrine of the church is that we are to live as missionaries because Jesus stepped into our culture to rescue us, but the culture of the church focuses almost exclusively on what programs and events the church offers, the culture will attempt to squelch and suffocate desires to serve the surrounding community. Time and time again a little digging reveals that the outcomes of the local church contradict the ambitious vision statements. Why is this so? Why don’t our campaigns, rebranding efforts, and endless streams of mission statements change our future?

But the Cythereans venerated this goddess in consequence of learning her sacred rites from the Phoenicians." The Assyrian Venus, then--that is, the great goddess of Babylon--and the Cyprian Venus were one and the same, and consequently the "bloodless" altars of the Paphian goddess show the character of the worship peculiar to the Babylonian goddess, from whim she was derived. In this respect the goddess-queen of Chaldea differed from her son, who was worshipped in her arms. He was, as we have seen, represented as delighting in blood. But she, as the mother of grace and mercy, as the celestial "Dove," as "the hope of the whole world," was averse to blood, and was represented in a benign and gentle character. Accordingly, in Babylon she bore the name of Mylitta --that is, "The Mediatrix." Every one who reads the Bible, and sees how expressly it declares that, as there is only "one God," so there is only "one Mediator between God and man" (1 Tim.ii. 5), must marvel how it could ever have entered the mind of any one to bestow on Mary, as is done by the Church of Rome, the character of the "Mediatrix.

So, the whole reason you feel “condemned” all the time could simply be your failure to accept and embrace what is written in the Scriptures. On the other hand, there could be a very different reason for the uncomfortable feelings you are experiencing. It could be that the Spirit is dealing with you because of unconfessed, unforsaken sin in your life, but you are mistaking conviction for condemnation. This confusion can be fatal, since conviction is something we must have if we become insensitive to sin. Conviction is good, not bad, something sent from heaven, not manufactured in hell.               If we can continue in sin without conviction, that is a real danger sign. Either our hearts have become so hard that we no longer sense the prodding and reproving of the Spirit, or, worse than that, the Spirit has simply left us alone–an absolutely dreadful prospect. You should thank God when His conviction breaks your heart, fully yielding to the Spirit, since heeding His rebuke always brings life.               Maybe there’s something wrong in your life and you know it. That’s why there is that gnawing pain deep within. Unfortunately, many believers who confuse conviction with condemnation are driven away from the Lord, always feeling rejected and therefore dejected. Other believers, also mistaking conviction for condemnation, react in the opposite way, saying, “That feeling is not from God. I rebuke you, Satan![64] That’s just legalism at its worst.” And so, rather than repent, they run. And this means that neither group responds correctly to the conviction of the Spirit!               What then is the difference between conviction and condemnation? Conviction is like the work of the prosecuting attorney, proving his case against the defendant and exposing his crime.[65] Condemnation is like the judge’s gavel coming down with a final, irreversible verdict of “Guilty!”[66] Conviction says, “You have sinned. Come back to Me!” Condemnation says, “You are guilty. Get away from Me!”               When God convicts the unsaved, He does it to bring them to conversion. As long as they are being convicted, they are not yet hopelessly condemned. When God convicts the saved, He does it to bring His straying saints back to Himself. Conviction for us means that we are still part of the family, since, “If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons” (Heb. 12:9). When we are convicted and even chastised by our Father, that is the time to come to Him and confess our sins, finding mercy through the blood of Jesus and receiving grace to turn from sin. But condemnation is an entirely different story. There is no mercy there! It is a place where judgment rules and damnation reigns. It has nothing to do with us!