Blessed are the Merciful and the Discipline of Mercy

The teachings of Jesus are immersed in a handful of foundational principles. One of these principles is that the follower of Jesus is to be an expert at showing mercy from the heart. The source of this mercy is our abiding awareness of God’s mercy toward us and our continual, frequent and recurrent need for mercy. 

Foundational Principles

Before, we jump into the discipline of mercy, let’s review Jesus’ way of discipleship. First, the first principle of all Christianity is that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus taught us that it is upon this rock, this first truth, that He will build His church. To believe that Jesus is the Christ is to have faith that the answer to the human predicament is solved by Jesus Christ. Jesus came to set the world right. Our faith is that by believing and following Jesus, we will experience a new quality of life. This quality of life is called the “Kingdom of Heaven” or the “Kingdom of God”. This kingdom is from the inside out. Jesus’ teachings center on heart management and life transformation. He teaches us to love our enemies from the heart. He teaches us to be humble and meek and merciful. By following Jesus, the King, we enter and experience His kingdom. This process of following Jesus and experiencing the kingdom is called discipleship. We experience the kingdom as we begin to pattern our lives through the teachings of Jesus. Therefore, we apply the teachings of Jesus in order to enter the quality of life called the kingdom. 

The Heart of the Gospel - Mercy

Sermon on Mercy and Resentments Inventory (stream) (download)

A little more info on the sermon above. The discipleship program of Jesus is actually rather simple. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus states a few root causes and heart sources of sin that are the source of all our problems.
Anger: We harbor resentments and find that we say "what a knucklehead" etc to others and our anger causes harm. The answer to this problem is rather simple. We must forgive and bless these people. Forgiving and blessing is the lifestyle of the disciple.
Pride: The fact is in many of the instances in which we have conflict with people we are to blame. So if we know our brother has something against us we need to go and "make peace". In other words, we have to confess our wrongs and humble our selves. The answer is to make apology, amends and humble oursleves.
Lust: Jesus says sexual lust is a problem that also must be dealt with ruthlessly.

In chapter 6, Jesus begins to deal with two problems fear and its offspring, greed. The love of money is the root of all kinds of problems. Pagans seek after money sex and power and well, Christians simply must confess these problems and ask for deliverance. Sex, anger and money: these are the ways of the world of which Jesus simply asks us to be honest about and ask the kingdom to come and rid our hearts of these vices.

The above sermon deals with this first problem and gives some practical ways to overcome resentments and to practice forgiveness and blessing on a daily basis.

brad