A Meditation on Receiving God’s Mercy in Psalm 140:6

This is Christian Meditation for A Bigger Life – a time for you to relax, refocus, and re-narrate your life. I’m Dave Cover. I want to help you with Christian meditation where you can break through all the distractions and experience God’s presence through biblically guided imagination. 

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Psalms 140:6 (NIV) 

I say to the LORD, “You are my God.”

Hear, LORD, my cry for mercy.

One way to think of mercy is not getting the punishment you deserve. Whereas grace is getting the blessing you don’t deserve. 

We don’t want to get too technical with these kinds of things because this distinction is not always what the biblical authors are thinking – but one way to think of mercy is the death of Jesus on the cross and one way to think of grace is the resurrection of Jesus. The cross takes the punishment you deserve. The resurrection gives you the blessing you don’t deserve.

The cry for mercy is the acknowledgment of your desperate need for God‘s forgiveness. To atone for your sin through Jesus on the cross. It’s an emotional disposition of humbling ourselves before God and acknowledging that we have nothing in ourselves to put our confidence in except to cry out for God’s mercy. “Have mercy on me, a sinner” is what the tax collector says in Jesus’s parable in Luke 18:13. And Jesus says he’s the one who went away justified before God (Luke 18:14). “For those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

To me at least, there’s a kind of relief that comes from knowing that my only hope is to cry out for God’s mercy. Knowing that there’s nothing I can do to atone for my sin other than humble myself and cling to Jesus on the cross. That that’s my only good option.

“LORD” in all uppercase letters in our English Bibles indicates that in Hebrew God’s name, Yahweh, is used (for example, Exodus 3:14-15; Isaiah 42:8). Yahweh is the ancient Hebrew verb form for “HE IS.” God’s name, Yahweh, is used more than any other term for God in the Hebrew scriptures. More than “God” is used. 

When we survey the various truths associated with God’s name, HE IS, in the Hebrew scriptures (what we call the Old Testament), four important aspects of God are emphasized. 

1. HE IS the Creator and Sustainer of ALL that exists, including this entire universe (Ps 33:6; Isa 40:26; Isa 42:5; Isa 44:24). 
2. HE IS the Giver and Sustainer of ALL life everywhere always (Num 27:16; Job 12:10; Acts 17:25).
3. HE IS eternal and forever God (Isa 40:28; Isa 57:15)
4. HE IS ALWAYS infinitely 100% present with you and in control of everything in your life at every moment (Ps 31:14-15; without being any less present or focused anywhere else in the universe, because HE IS infinite). See Jesus’s words in Matthew 10:29-31.

We often meditate on God‘s name in this podcast because it is the key to experiencing God as HE IS. God’s name is filled with wonder and mystery and transcendence for us to meditate on using our biblically guided imagination.

So imagine – envision – this reality. He is the Source of all being; he is the Giver of your life and sustains your life at every moment; he is the one who “inhabits eternity” (Isaiah 57:15), and so has the eternal perspective in all your life’s circumstances; and he is infinitely, intimately, 100% present with you at every moment and in control of every circumstance in your life.

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Our audio engineer is Matthew Matlack.

This podcast is a ministry of The Crossing, a church in Columbia, Missouri, a college town where the flagship campus of the University of Missouri is located.