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Have I Used Up God's Mercy?

“It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”
Lamentations 3:22-23 (KJV)

We all have somebody who kept showing up for us back when we gave them nothing in return.

They kept calling even when we wouldn't pick up the phone. They kept showing up for us time and time again.

Nothing we did in that stretch earned another visit or phone call.

A lot of us never said thank you, which still makes us feel guilty to this day.

If a person stayed that long for nothing and we still treated them like that, then whatever patience they had left has to be almost gone by now.

Without ever deciding to, we assume God feels the same way towards us.

So how much of His patience have I used up already?

Jeremiah wrote this. He was a prophet, which means God handed him words to say to his own people.

Those people didn't want to hear them.

He watched his city get torn down around him.

He wrote an entire book of grief, and right in the middle of it he wrote the two lines sitting up top.

The first one is worth slowing down on:

"It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed."

Lamentations 3:22 (KJV)

Consumed means swallowed up, nothing left.

Mercy is God handing good to a person who hasn't earned it and can't pay it back.

Jeremiah is telling us the only reason there's anything left of him at all is that God kept handing him what he never earned.

Then he tells us why that mercy never ran dry, in the second half of that same verse: "because his compassions fail not." Fail not just means they never run out.

The people who kept showing up for us were running on a supply that could run out. Some of them hit the end of theirs.

We wait for God to do the same thing, because everybody else eventually did.

Then he says it a second way, in verse 23. Everything sits on one word.

New.

"They are new every morning."

Lamentations 3:23 (KJV)

He didn't say more. More is whatever survived from yesterday.

New is mercy nobody has used yet, given to people God already knows are going to waste a good part of it.

God has never once shown up to us on leftovers.

Jeremiah says something just before all of this. It's the only reason he ever got to hope at all:

"This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope."

Lamentations 3:21 (KJV)

There's an order here. He recalls first and the hope arrives second.

He has to remember first essentially, and then comes hope. He cursed God and wept bitterly over having no disciples.

Although Jeremiah did these things, he had to recall the mercy that God showed in all of his disobedience.

The lie we keep falling or is that we've spent all of God's mercy. The more we take without giving anything back, the less of it is waiting on us now.

That's genuinely how it worked with people, so we assume that's how it works with God.

There are people who we did dirty.

Some of them aren't even here anymore.

Today isn't going to fix that.

So God settled the debt Himself.

He sent His own Son. Jesus never ran up a debt of His own, not one day of His life.

That's the only reason He could pick up ours.

He was still carrying it when the soldiers put Him on a cross. He died holding everything we owed.

So No. You have not used it up.

God is not doing that math.

He is here this morning with mercy He has never handed out before.

Tomorrow morning there is another batch, made tomorrow.

Nothing you do today changes how much of it is waiting.

Here's how to start living off new mercy today:

1. Call the person who kept showing up for you.

Don't build a speech first. Tell them you know what they did and that you never said anything about it.

Let it be short. Let it be awkward. But most importantly, let it be real. Use discernment here, respect their boundaries.

Send it as a text if that's all you can manage today, because a text you actually send beats a call you keep putting off. If they're gone, say it out loud to God instead, because that thank-you still has somewhere to go.

2. When your feelings tell you you're finished with God, remember this verse and His renewing mercy.

That's the order Jeremiah used. It's what faith actually is.

You don't wait around until you feel new. You go get what God said about His own mercy.

You hold your feelings up against it.

3. Before your feet hit the floor tomorrow, say this out loud: His mercies are new every morning.

Most of us start counting what we owe Him before our eyes are open. Get His words in ahead of that count.

PRAYER

Precious Lord, I've been treating You like somebody who's almost finished with me.

I counted up everything I took and never gave back. I decided that had to be Your limit.

Today I quit doing that math.

Your mercies are new this morning. I didn't pay for a single one of them.

Thank You for coming all the way in when I never once came out.

Help me take today's mercy today. Help me pick up the phone and thank the person You sent to keep showing up.

In Jesus' beautiful name we pray. Amen.