Crossroads Church Staten Island

The heart of God being merciful is well chronicled throughout Scripture, whether it is indirectly referenced through an outcome to God’s reaction and response to a sinner or someone who has lost their way, or how God has extended His compassion to someone who is suffering and in need of refuge. The Father and mercy can be seen throughout the Scripture. The whole reason why we have this term of endearment for God, Father, is because Jesus taught us to call Him Father. In The Lord’s Prayer Jesus instructs us to pray “Our Father.” We’re not taught to call Him “the man upstairs” or “the big guy” or just to say God, as people have manipulated that. There’s one Father and there’s no one like Him. He’s incomparable. He’s Our Father. As you study the Scriptures we have this great understanding to reach out to Him and call Him Father, and then we have other attributes and characteristics of God that help us in our prayer life, and our confidence in God. The central characteristic of all of God The Father’s characteristics is mercy. God is the Father of mercies. If you’ve professed your faith in Christ He’s your Father, and it is this relationship of child and Father that is central, and in the midst of that is looking to the Father to Receive The Father’s Mercy.

Freedom is such an important characteristic of who we are, and who we are as a country. Today in New Dorp we were reminded of the sacrifices that have been made to preserve this freedom that we have in the United States with a memorial run that was held in honor of Staff Sergeant Michael Ollis. While serving his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, Staff Sergeant Ellis died will protecting a Polish soldier from a suicide bomber. Running into danger, Ollis covered and shielded the soldier from sudden death. Ollis’ heroic actions are what American freedom is build on. Here in the United States, it is a time for all of us to reflect on how blessed we are to live in this country, and the gift we have to live in freedom. Just as many soldiers like Staff Sergeant Michael Ollis have served and sacrificed so that we may have national freedom, there is One who sacrificed Himself to set us free spiritually. His name is Jesus. Through God’s free gift of salvation that you need to accept, God demonstrated His mercy, setting you free from your past, your sin, chains that hold you down, and from death. This is all through Jesus’ merciful sacrificial death on the cross. For whatever is holding you captive, because of Jesus, there is freedom in God’s mercy.

God has a heart of mercy. The greatest display of His mercy is the cross. For those who place their faith in Jesus Christ, the greatest result and power of His mercy is that they’ve been washed clean of their sins. Not only have they been guaranteed a home in heaven, but they have been set free from sin. This mercy from sin is available to all who place their faith in Christ. Even after accepting Jesus as Lord, and Savior, you can find yourself wondering and asking “Do I still have the sink of my sin?” or “Do I still have the stench of my rotten decisions?” You can find yourself not sure where you stand. Mercy explains exactly where you stand. Instead of finding ways to cover up the stink and stench of sin, we have mercy. For all of our sins, we can be washed in God’s mercy.

God desires to cover you in mercy, especially when you are going through trials, turmoil, temptations, and tribulations. This life is going to be filled with trouble. Even Jesus Himself said it will be. We live in very troubling times nationally, internationally, as well as in our own hearts and our own homes. This is why for your sins, your storms, and your struggles you want to seek God’s covering of mercy.

When you study the character of God, there’s no greater quality than the mercy of God. The grace of God, love of God, and goodness of God, all find their roots in His unconditional and never-ending mercies. When you think about your life, the struggles you go through, the shame you feel that you don’t tell anyone else about, the struggles, strains, and sins that you have; in all of these realities of life, you have one single prayer that God wants you to bring to Him. That prayer is a prayer of mercy.

God’s most important attribute is His mercy. It’s because of God’s blessing of mercy that you enjoy forgiveness, find faith, help friends, and grow closer to the Lord. Mercy helps you deal with difficult people, discouraging problems, and draining pressures that seem to routinely be a part of your life. God has chosen mercy to be the very cure for your fears, insecurities, doubts, and worries. God’s mercy is paramount in understanding your relationship with Him. Given the importance of mercy, it should be of no surprise that God calls you to representative His mercy to others. Not only are you to receive mercy, but God has called you to be His representative of mercy.

In the Bible, reminders of God’s mercies renewing daily are nestled right in the middle of a very hard season for God’s people. If you find yourself as one of God’s people, and you are experiencing great difficulties, turmoil, hardships, unexplainable things, things that you would think God’s people shouldn’t have to endure, then you find yourself within the context of the book of Lamentations. Before you can truly see the greatness of God’s mercies despite our sin, an understanding of how serious sin is to God is needed. Looking at Israel in the Old Testament and using that as a parallel to your own life, you will find yourself sensing the heaviness of you own sin, being in awe before the holiness of God, who created us; and you can live in hope because of Jesus Christ, who went to the cross to take God’s wrath in your place. That is why we can say to God great is thy faithfulness, because God grants us new mercies every morning.

When we fail, it’s human nature to want to revert to our old ways, or to go back to comfort zones. We’ve all done something that we’ve regretted, we’ve said we would do something and have done the opposite. We’ve let someone down at one point or another. We’ve felt like we’ve let God down. We’re all human, we’re all sinners, we all stumble, and we all fall. The good news is that when we do fail, God is a merciful God. When we fail, and fall short; God’s mercy is there not only to forgive us, but to use our failures and shortcomings for good in the future. Accepting Christ doesn’t mean that life is going to be perfect. There will be stones along the way that can cause us to trip or block our path. The question though, is whether we let those stones be used as stepping stones to advance from, or if we let them be our tombstones where we remain. When you stumble, and fall, and fall; that is where you need to look to God’s mercy.

The most powerful and significant day in world history, every promise in Scripture, every christian tradition we partake in, every prayer of sincerity that we offer up, every plea for forgiveness of sin that we ask the Heavenly Father of, every conviction of comfort that we seek, and every ounce of hope that we have in heaven finds its roots in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection is the most magnanimous event that has ever taken place on the face of the earth. History records this event, medical science comes alongside and verifies the evidence, and the record of God, which is the Bible, for 2000 plus years has preserved this truth that we hold in our hearts. Every time you write a check, send an email that has a date stamp on it, or celebrate a birthday you are referencing the resurrection. The year is 2017, but 2017 from what? Because 2017 years from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This event reverberated in hell. The resurrection of Jesus Christ sent death and sin their final deathblows. It silenced the boast of the Devil himself. We gather every Sunday, the first day of the week, to give honor and praise to God, and most importantly to remember this centerpiece of our salvation. Everything that we celebrate, finds its center in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Supporting all of this is the most endearing quality and attribute of God that you can find as you study the Scriptures. That quality is God’s mercy. All of grace, love, comfort, forgiveness, and hope finds its center in the mercy of Almighty God. People think God quality is that He is mean. That’s a misconception of God. Some say, “God’s mean He just wants to get even with me.” or “I’m having a lousy day. It’s God’s fault, He’s doing this to me.” If God wanted to get even with us, He could turn you into smoke in a second. He’s not going to cause your keys to go missing, or for you to have a bad hair day, or for someone to insult you. That’s not God. God is not mean, He is merciful. God has an abundance of mercy. He’s well stocked in mercy. You cannot exhaust the mercies of God. His mercies even renew each day. It is all about God’s mercy. God’s unmerited kindness that has restricted the punishment, and released provision. That is why as we celebrate Easter, it is important to make the choice to be a person living in the mercy of Jesus.

Before we celebrate the empty tomb of Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday, we must remember with reverence and respect, so great a salvation that has been afforded to us by the Lord Jesus Christ because of His sacrificial death on the cross. All of the grace that has been afforded to us, the unconditional love that we sing about, the peace that has been made with God, the faith that we hold to be true in our hearts, the hope we have in eternal life, the trust in God’s sovereignty, the knowledge of His compassion and of His kindness; is all undergirded by the chief quality and attribute of Almighty God. It’s the quality that is the opposite of what some may say God is. God isn’t some mean cosmic cop in the sky looking to get even with you. The truth is that God is merciful. It is God’s chief quality, and the greatest display of God’s mercy is the cross. The message of the cross isn’t one of religious instruction, or holy observance for self-edification. The message of the cross is one of mercy. That the mercy of Christ came running down for all to experience and drink from. That this mercy can reach the person who’s the furthest from the cross, or the person who thinks they are the closest. This mercy levels the ground at the foot of the cross. This message of mercy says that all are welcome. It sobers up the greatest of sinners, and humbles the biggest of hypocrites, and pierces the thickest of skulls and hearts like ours. The context of Good Friday prepares us for this moment This moment of the Mercy Of The Cross.

Palm Sunday is a day in our minds and hearts to be set apart. It symbolizes God’s plan of redemption nearing its apex. Jesus Christ was coming into the Holy City on Palm Sunday, with the humblest of coronations as a King. People laid palm leaves and branches at His feet as He rode in on a donkey; all while fulfilling prophecy after prophecy from the Old Testament. What’s interesting about Jesus entering the Holy City is that the very first divine action of the King, Jesus, was that He cleansed the Temple. The same way that people might do a cleanse or detox of their body, to rid their body of toxins and impurities that are harmful, is the same as what the Scriptures teach about cleansing your heart, soul, and mind. You want to be as active as you can be in living out your faith, and for taking care of your family; so you want to take care of your body to be healthy. You also want to cleanse your body for spiritual health by removing counterproductive focuses in your walk with God.

Don’t you have a few cravings about food? It could be two o’clock in the morning and you could find yourself craving something sweet, something salty, ice cream, pizza, cold food, hot food, or anything in between. You could crave and desire foods that are unhealthy for your body, yet you’ll still eat it to give in to the craving that you have. You can draw a straight line between harmful cravings for food, and what the Bible talks about with temptation. These harmful cravings are temptations and solicitations to make unhealthy spiritual choices that lead to sin, and brings you to a place of not being right with God. When you are strong spiritually, and have a soul that’s right with God, you put yourself in a place for God to demonstrate His strength in overcoming any stronghold, temptation, addiction, or problem in your life. But when you allow yourself to give in to the harmful craving of temptation, you disconnect yourself from God and His strength. That is why, in order to be spiritually healthy, you must guard against harmful cravings.

One of the leading causes for the sicknesses and illnesses that you can have is processed foods. As you look to what goes into processing them, you’ll find that those processed foods are harmful to you because of the chemicals used in the processing. These chemicals present a problem to your nutrition. One of the problems in processing food are the evil twins of sugar and high fructose. They, like other processed chemicals negatively effect your cholesterol and blood sugar. They can cause diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver, and other forms of sickness. When you look at processed foods, you’ll see that it is something you want to avoid in order to have proper nutrition. The same is true spiritually. Just as there are processed foods infused with chemicals, sugar, and high fructose; there is processed spiritual food infused with false and sugar coated teachings. These processed false teachings also have a way of affecting your beliefs and behaviors; which is why you need to know how to avoid processed spiritual food.

Your body needs water. Without it, you wouldn’t last very long. Since water helps maintain your temperature, lubricates your joints, and removes waste from your body to just name a few of it’s functions; the last thing you want to do is become dehydrated. When your body is dehydrated you can find yourself with multiple symptoms and effects as a result which include dizziness, confusion, a swollen tongue, a dry mouth, heart palpitations, and even seizures. There is a significance to water and hydration spiritually as well. Over 500 times in the Bible, God references it. If you’ve ever been dehydrated with God you can find yourself with multiple spiritual symptoms including apathy, arrogance, a lack of availability to the things of God, and a lack of awareness of God. Just as it’s vital to stay physically hydrated with water, it’s just as important to know how to keep your relationship with God hydrated.

Popular fast food chains are always working to repackage and reshape how their food is presented. They’ll knock down buildings to build new state of the art facilities, and they’ll hang banners and balloons to announce their grand opening to draw your attention. But no matter the claims that they make, or the banners and balloons that they put out; there’s still the same unhealthy chemicals in their food. Once you look into the ingredients and chemicals that they use to create and process their food, you can see that you cannot trust their food to provide you with the nutrition that your body needs to be healthy. Like physical health, your spiritual health depends on looking at the ingredients you are being served to see if you can trust that they provide the proper spiritual nutrition that your soul need. The ingredients of the world can look pretty, nice, and new; but at the end of the day, those ingredients are counterproductive to your desire to be healthy. Your soul, needs someplace to look to for nutrition that will provide you with the spiritual health that you need. The ingredients of the Bible that your soul needs. And as you look to the Bible, and it’s ingredients, you’ll see that their are multiple sources of evidence that you can see that you can trust the ingredients of the Scripture.

Here on Staten Island, and in America, it’s not hard to find food. To the left and right of the church, right across the street, and along the block are bagel stores, pizzerias, bakeries, delis, restaurants, and many other places for food. In every town on the Island there’s at least two pizzerias and a bakery. So it’s not about a problem with access to food when it comes to healthy nutrition. What it comes down to is having the right understanding of nutrition, and how to nourish your body with the proper foods. While you can get foods of all kinds at a moment’s notice, you can spend an unnecessary amount of time, money, and energy buying and eating foods that don’t nourish your body. The same is true with God. People spend an unnecessary amount of money and resources trying to read signs from the stars, looking to people to tell them their fortune, or to have their palms read. There are people who take God’s Word in the Bible and distort it to try and tell you that everything’s going to be okay all the time. That it’s always going to be sunshine and lollipops. But the truth of the matter is that troubles will come. Then there are those who people go because they tell them what they want to hear just to feel better. In life, the sun doesn’t always come out tomorrow. Doubts, discouragements, trials, and temptations will come. Just as you want to have the right nutrition in your body to be healthy physically, you want have God’s proper nutrition to be healthy spiritually. So just as you need to know how to find nourishment from the right foods, you need to know how to find nourishment from God.

God wants you to be healthy from the inside, out. It’s so important that you are living from a healthy soul, and your soul is ultimately nourished from the Word of God. Nutrition has significant values and benefits to you. Think about the preventative benefits to eating right. Plant based foods, such as fruits, vegetables, herbs, and seeds’ are illness fighting foods that can prevent a multitude of sicknesses. Not only are healthy foods healthy in terms of prevention; but when you are going through an illness, there are foods that you can put into your body that help fight the specific illnesses that you have. God has given you these healthy foods for your health. Just as there are physical illnesses, there are also spiritual illnesses in life that you encounter. Those spiritual illnesses are called troubles. Life is filled with troubles. There’s either something troubling you right now, some trouble that has just ended, or there is a trouble you don’t know about, that’s about to happen. Jesus, Himself, said that in this world, you will have trouble. Just as we need physical nutrition to combat the illnesses of the body, we need spiritual nutrition to fight off the troubles of life.

The same way that your tongue can bless or curse others, your tongue can be a blessing or a cursing with your eating habits. That’s your tastebuds. God has designed your tastebuds to send messages to your brain about the different foods that you are having. Before you think that you may have ruined your tastebuds by eating damaging foods, or having a smoking habit; your tastebuds get replaced every 10-14 days. There’s an opportunity to change your eating habits just by the fact that God gives you new tastebuds every two weeks. As your tastebuds play a critical role in how you eat, so does your taste for the word of God play a critical role in your understanding of the nutrition that comes from God’s Word. Just as it is important in physical nutrition to have control over your tastebuds, and what you are tasting, it’s important in your spiritual nutrition to get control of your spiritual tastebuds, by tasting God’s Word.

What good is making excellent choices for your life, if you don’t allow them to become healthy habits in your life. It would be a waste. It’s like saying, “I’m going to eat healthy for the month of January, because I feel guilty for how lousy I ate during the holiday season. I’m going to eat healthy and get in shape, but then once February or March comes, that’s out the window. I’ll worry about it next year again. Sometimes you do this financially. You’ll cut back on spending, pay a bill down, save for something. You’ll make good choices, but they never translate into a lifestyle or a habit. God wants you to have healthy habits in your life, and the way to do it is to change those good choices you make for life fitness into healthy lifetime habits.

When you think about being healthy in your eating, you need the support of a nutritionist to prescribe an eating plan so you can put into your body the necessary foods for health, and to guide you in keeping away from foods that are damaging. If you are to workout and get serious about taking care of your body physically, you might need the support of a personal trainer, or someone who can lay out a game plan of how to take care of your body. The same is true spiritually. To be spiritually fit, you need spiritual support. There’s the misconception that you don’t need any help when it comes to God. That you can just figure things out as you go along. And that God’s help is not that important. Well that’s simply not true. The same way you need to be mindful and strategic about how you take care of your physical body is the same way you need to be about your spiritual health with God. To have overall life fitness, you need to be getting support from God, and to be giving support out to others. This choice of support leads to an overall understanding of health in all facets of life.