The Mercy of God
144
Maybe you messed up. Maybe you just acted foolishly. When God tried to tell you something,
you had another idea, and you just pushed it and did it, and now you’re in a mess, and you owe
everyone in town, and your credit is a mess and everything else. Listen, it is not the end. Some
might say, “Well, you made your bed hard, now you’ve got to lay in it. You sowed it, and now
you’ve got to reap it.” No! No! Don’t forget mercy. Mercy means you don’t get the punishment
and judgment you should have gotten, and mercy means you do get the favor and blessing you
shouldn’t have gotten.
Not too long after Phyllis and I got started in the ministry, we didn’t have any money to speak of,
but we started tithing and sowing, and we started getting a harvest. Some money started coming
in, and we just spent it. We didn’t take care of our taxes properly, and we didn’t take care of
some other stuff and were just dumb—and we got into a mess over a period of a year or two.
Then we owed taxes, and we were just kind of making it. But you know, when you have to do all
the normal things, plus catch up, you can get behind in a hurry, and then it just keeps getting
worse. We got to the place where we owed thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars on back taxes;
this was several years ago.
We did what we knew how to do, and we got it down to about ten thousand dollars. We were
believing God, and the first step of this was putting our nose in the carpet and repenting. We
could have said, as many do, “The devil is just attacking us because we’re serving God so good!
The devil is just attacking us! He’s attacking me and attacking my finances.” Actually, he just
laughed while you messed yourself up. No, we were just dumb and didn’t think beyond our
noses. So there we were.
Well, we repented. “Repented” means we admitted and acknowledged our ignorance, our
foolishness, and how we missed Him, and we asked for mercy. Oh, thank God He is so merciful.
We said, “Lord, if we would have listened to You, we wouldn’t be in this shape right now. But
we didn’t listen, and we did some dumb stuff, and You know it better than we do, and we’re
repenting. We’re going to listen to You better. We’re going to have more wisdom in the future.
Help us. But, Lord, we need help right now, and I know we haven’t earned it, and we don’t
deserve it, but You’re merciful.” He’s the Father of mercies, in more than one area. “Lord, we’re
asking You for mercy.”
So we went on for a few weeks. We were in another city having a meeting, and a man, a
minister, told me he wanted me to agree with him about some stuff in his finances. He told me
about a tax situation, and I just said, “Yeah, I know how that is.” That’s all I said. “Yeah, I know
how that is.”
Well, the Lord dealt with him, and the next day, he asked me, “Do you owe taxes?”
I said, “Why?” This was before a service.
He said, “Well, I’ve got a reason why.”
I said, “Well…yeah.”
