Keeping Balanced

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Keeping Balanced

Rev. Luke Powell

Let's get to the high point of this song, Majesty and Mercy, as we listen to the chorus:

But here you are, holding me, even though I don't deserve you.
You never fail giving me just what I need.
I'm so amazed and overwhelmed at your majesty and mercy
Your majesty and mercy, your majesty and mercy, oh Jesus.

Keeping God's Majesty and Mercy in Balance

I find that I need to hold both God's majesty and His mercy in my mind, always. When I favour one over the other, I start to lose my balance spiritually.

If I focus on His majesty and His greatness and power without a deep appreciation of His mercy, then I start to see God as tough and aggressive. I get such a sense of unworthiness as I compare myself to Him that He starts to scare me. I think this is unbalanced - if you walk in perpetual terror, your view of God is not quite right.

The other imbalance is emphasising His mercy and forgetting His greatness, power, and majesty - starting to see God as just "one of the guys", or a casual, everyday person. You need to retain that sense of awe, that fear of the Lord - which is not terror, but a true awareness of what He's capable of, and an amazement at that.

In fact I think you only really start to understand the depth of His mercy when you understand just how great and mighty He is.

Standing in Awe of the God of Spring and Winter

T. Dewitt Talmage was one of the great Presbyterian preachers of the 1800s, and I love his words in a sermon entitled The Pleiades and Orion: "Oh, now I get the best view of God I ever had! There are two kinds of sermons I never want to preach - the one that presents God so kind, so indulgent, so lenient, so imbecile that men may do what they will against Him, and fracture His every law, and put the cry of their impertinence and rebellion under His throne, and while they are spitting in His face and stabbing at His heart, He takes them up in His arms and kisses their infuriated brow and cheek, saying, 'Of such is the kingdom of heaven.' The other kind of sermon I never want to preach is the one that represents God as all fire and torture and thundercloud, and with red-hot pitch-fork tossing the human race into paroxysms of infinite agony. The sermon that I am now preaching believes in a God of loving, kindly warning, the God of spring and winter, the God of the Pleiades and Orion."

Friends, stand amazed and overwhelmed at His majesty, and His mercy.

I hope you might listen to this song from time to time to help you keep that in balance. Please do have a look at more of my songs on my main YouTube channel - I will put the link here for you to check those out.

God bless you and have a great weekend.

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