Mercy of God

"What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, 'For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: 'I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.' Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden." - Romans 9:14-18

I honestly didn't understand the mercy of God. Still a bit of a foreign concept but I'm slowly learning to ask God to have mercy upon me, a wicked sinner.

Mercy does not mean forgiveness nor does it mean grace.
Mercy means pity, feeling sorry, like how we may feel when we see a starving child from Africa. Boy, am I at the mercy of God in living each day! I never understood what it meant when the blinds begged Jesus for mercy. We must beg God to look upon us with mercy because we are so helpless and because we are so well-deserving of condemnation. (*this part was edited. I just came back from a Bible study and we re-learned about mercy and how foolish I was to depend on the worldly dictionary to give definiton of what mercy, what God has for us!)

But God shows clearly that He is a merciful God through sending His Son. He had mercy upon us that He made a way for us through Christ. He knew that we were pitiful beings that had no power but subject to the wrath of Him who created us. Have mercy on us, Lord!

Even when Jonah was angry at the fact that Ninevah was saved from calamity of the Lord. God teaches Jonah about His mercy through the divine appointment of a rising and a falling of a plant. At its withering, Jonah was "angry enough to die" (dramatic much?) and God says this in response to Jonah's anger.

"But the LORD said, 'You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?'" - Jonah 4:10-11

God loves those whom He created, has mercy on them, and desires that everyone be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). Today is the day of salvation. Believe Him and be saved.