The Redemptive Gift of Mercy

There is little in the way of a disclaimer, except to say that this post touches me in a deep place the the other six did not…

The woman above is Wendy Falls.  Whether or not anyone finds this strange, that woman is one of my closest friends.  David, her husband, and I, have dealt with have gone through various shades and hues of hell and back together the last 18 years.  And Wendy, who has stood by his side since June 22, 2002, when she could have shriveled up and died many times, is one woman I hold in exceptionally high regard.

She has ALWAYS been there constantly, even when it hurt. This is easily my benchmark for the Mercy Gift.

Safe, worshipping, overwhelming the way she was designed to be, talkative (yes I just used talkative), emotive, gravitating natch toward intimacy, and sensitive.

Mind you, I have listened to a lot of teaching on this gift. Some other precious ladies and gentlemen who are among my group of friends are also Mercies, and I know there are several whom probably come to each of your minds when you think “healthy Mercy”.  I have several as well.  And doubtless, some of these traits that I mention will doubtless seem unfamiliar to y’all who are Mercies, but for whatever reason, I have come to associate these traits with Mercy.

1. Mercies are given to helping others to be comfortable. They are often not the heavily, challenging type the way Prophets are.
2. Mercies often times practice pain-avoidance. They hate causing pain to others and to themselves.
3. I have heard a lot that Mercies are described as hearing with their spirits first. This is a misunderstanding of the way major teachers have communicated the truth of a Mercy. It is not Mercies alone that hear through their spirits first. It is all the gifts that hear G-d first in the spirits. “G-d deals with us on the level of the spirit, not the soul” (Nurturing Your Spirit, Series 1, I don’t know which Disc or Cut or Timestamp). He deals with ALL of us on the level of the spirit, NOT on the level of the soul. Non-Mercies need to quit assuming they are less legitimate because they have the misconception that only Mercies hear first with their spirit.
4. The actual difference between Mercies and non-Mercies is not that Mercies hear with their spirits. Rather, it is that Mercies hear through their heart, and lead with their emotions in a situation and many non-Mercies hear through their mind and lead with their thoughts, oftentimes, or their intuitions. Their emotional responses and resonance is a form of discernment.
5. So, for example, Mercy and Prophet are in a situation where discernment is needed. On the one hand, Prophet begins to feel something out and get objective data (or subjective thoughts, vision, picture, etc. whatever the case) and brings principles to bear. Mercy, on the other hand, “feels” something happening and cannot necessarily put words to it, and sometimes will not realize that what they are doing is discerning, because it comes second nature. This happens to Wendy all the time when she is in a discernment situation with David, her husband. And as she is feeling, those emotions will be radically on-point, and will spill all over the place, and she feels embarrassed because she is emoting all over the place. She won’t realizing that she is discerning something oftentimes and has discounted those emotions regularly. Looking back, David and she have recognized that the problem that was causing her to emote was the same problem for which David got data. It is kind of like a barometer. Looking back on her emotional episode in response to a place, she realizes she was discerning something. I am fairly sure that other Mercies respond like this, and then beat themselves up for having all these emotions.
6. Unlike Prophets and Teacher and Exhorters who hear with their minds, Mercies hear with their hearts. I realize this is a repeat of a previous point, but it bears repeating.
7. While we are at it, how about we QUIT saying the heart is more important than the mind and vice-versa? How about we quit with putting one over the other? I am sick to death of the way in which we denigrate the one for the other, and say we have too many strongholds here, and we should lead with our hearts or our minds because one form is more legitimate than the other. Some people are hardwired to lead with their minds and some with their hearts. The trick is blessing both to work together, because G-d put the two together. And our Seat of Dominion is where we do our best thinking, and our heart and reins (kidneys and adrenals) are where we do our best feeling of a situation, and all three are designed to work together. A Mercy is NOT more legitimate because they lead with heart and emotions and a Prophet is NOT more legitimate because they lead with their PC-data-mind or volcanic emotions. And a Teacher is not less legitimate because they lead with their mind, and the Exhorter for their revelation and broad vision, and their capacity to take the concepts of the spirit and quickly weave them together and make them understood in the language of the soul.
8. Mercies are going to use a vastly different language database then the other gifts. I know that Mac vs. PC can be an effective way to describe the difference, but I honestly thing that Mercies are more like Arch Linux. There is a Simplicity of design, a knowing that a different way is the right way and the best way when all the other gifts have all of this empirical data saying they should go in a different way than the Mercy suggests. See: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux#Principles
9. If you are going to go a different way as another gift, you sure as heck better have a close friend who is a Mercy, as a trusted advisor, that you can bounce all of your crazy ideas off of and receive feedback from them, even if that feedback is minimal, seems weird or unusual, and involves a caution. Mercies don’t need to necessarily be the chief counsel you use, but they serve a really important function in your constellation. In fact, I trust their input so much that I have several whose input I consider before making a decision.
10. Mercies, because of the way they get pinged differently from the other gifts, may not see recognize the pingings of the Spirit as pingings of the Spirit.
11. We live in a society that in many ways has so mangled evaluation of emotions that Mercies may feel invalidated by a typical American evangelical, politically conservative, Christian stance. The other more traditionally abrasive verbal/expressive gifts would do well to take a cue and bite their tongues around their Mercies, and maybe even use some of their fierce intentionality to help deliver and unmangle the Mercy from the assaultive American context in which we find ourselves.
12. I personally gravitate toward Mercy because, while I can verbally write and express myself well to others, and can become argumentative, I really despise confrontations. I don’t know many Mercies that run confrontational. Additionally, I also find that the following point sums up where I find myself many times.
13. Mercies approach situations with just a very simple knowing something feels right or wrong, it is not that they have a lot of data to back up what they know, they just know, and are not able to say why.
14. Mercies can have a number of friends that they enjoy, but precious few they trust and are real and authentic with. With those few people they trust, they are no-holds-barred completely vulnerable.
15. Mercies can have a whole lot of sexual and moral baggage. Think King David.
16. Mercies can have a greater sensitivity to other people’s feelings.
17. Mercies, while not defining the orthodoxy for how the church flows, often are knuckled under by the other more traditionally-seen-as-orthodox gifts into being forced to accept the orthodoxy of the other gifts. And they have one of two choices. Either to accept and go along to get along, or to resist and be considered stupid. They are forced to make this stupid decision if there is not someone who is willing to advocate for them, provide a safe place for them, and say, “hey, what about the Mercies.”
18. Mercies are shown and told “this is how the church works, this is how Christ works, this is how relationship works, and blah blah blah, this is how all of these things work”
19. Let me be the first to say that I point-blank do not agree with this idea that the Mercies are the only ones that are wired to hear G-d with their spirits. I don’t think it is a spirit thing. Yes, I know that some could parrot this or that teaching about the Mercy. But I really think it is a heart/emotion thing. Because the other six gifts get the mind of G-d, they hear with mind, and because the Mercies get the heart of G-d, they hear G-d with their heart. G-d, however, deals with all seven gifts on the level of the spirit. We are designed for our spirits to lead, and for our souls to submit and then team up with our spirits. But when G-d drops spiritual truth to each of us, it is on the level of our spirit and somehow has to find a way to translate to our souls in order to find expression on Monday morning. I am fine if people agree or disagree with me, even Mercies, but the communication of our spirit is what happens to all of us, and for some, the transition is easier than others. For example, the Exhorter is eminently designed above all the gifts for communication and designed to take the truth that gets dropped into the spirit and express it in the language of the soul.
20. But I have watched Mercies respond and lead by having their emotions stirred first.
21. The slowness of transition in the Mercy from receiving something from the data could be because their resistance to share because of rejection or because of wounding from a culture that doesn’t understand their language. It could also be hardwiring and design. It could also be a lack of trust of some of the people present in the group, because the Mercy might be concerned with how a non-Mercy in the group might respond. But if you watch Mercy after Mercy respond to a situation with a spiritual component, 11 times out of 10, the emotions kick in, likely without accompanying data. That is, the emotions are the data. And if you see your Mercy pulling emotions or emoting, then I am gonna be stern and say you better protect that Mercy’s emoting and treat it with the same value that you treat the expressed Prophet data. Mercy emotions are like a barometer.
22. David once told me that Wendy would discount her emotions because she thought she was just being emotional. But then, because David specializes in patterns, he noticed the correlation between the Mercy emotions and the spiritual dynamic of what they were dealing with. There is a huge correlation.
23. And now, this is the part where I drop a bomb into the conversation. And it is my pleasure to do so. Mercies are Verbal-expressive, and overwhelmingly so, if given the latitude to do so, the lack of wounding, and the space to develop their own thoughts. Most would not recognize themselves in this comment and thought, and doubtless, I will encounter some push-back on this. But this is a point I will not concede. I have enough experience from Mercies to know, they can carry a conversation, a deep, meaningful conversation, and they can take you to deep places, if you will allow, foster, and encourage them to. If you will give them a place to put the speech that might come across to others as stupid or lame or without explanation, then they might just surprise you. As kids, a lot of them were very overwhelming and as a result, commanded to clam up, shut up, or treated with contempt.
24. In our….Prophet nation….that affection toward the tolerating Mercy gets mangled in many places.
25. The day I drove from Massachusetts to Toronto, I felt the nastiness of the transition on the international border. The land of the U.S. is in many places loud and assaultive. When I crossed the border into Canada, specifically, Ontario, that loudness and assault…..stopped.
26. Mercies, and Mercy cities are designed to be people and places of refuge. This is where the Mercy and the Teacher can get confused.
27. Mercies gravitate toward the wounded and the hurting.
28. People generally trust the Mercy with all sorts of information and insight into their lives, without being able to name precisely why.
29. Mercies find flow, and if they cannot find flow, they push for looking ways to create it.

For the Mercy, their principle is the Principle of Fulfillment. Meaning they run for something to come to a satisfactory conclusion.
The conclusion of the sex organs is childbirth and pleasure, believe them or not. The fulfillment of a human family is to increase on size.
The fulfillment of a life is to come into full possession of a birthright.
The fulfillment of the tabernacle is so that the L-rd can make his booth, habitation, and sukkah among us (the Mercy Seat, and John 1:14).
The culimnation of design is fulfillment.
The fulfillment of Creation week is resting in that process, knowing that what has been accomplished is immensely satisfying. It is G-d dwelling among what He has made.
The fulfillment of the Exodus is G-d walking mong His people as they worship Him in the wilderness. It is about Him being with them.
It is not about gaining a tract of land merely so they can cease from worrying about food.
See, gerting it twisted, we think the Exodus was about possessing the land frequently, and we MISS the opportunity to dwell with G-d in the wilderness for a season and learn some things about G-d and friendship with Him that will be cut off from us after we enter the Promised Land.
Elijah was taken to either Servant or Mercy land to be fed by Ravens so He could learn to how Rest and Receive from G-d Himself and from G-d’s messengers, the ravens.
Don’t curse the dirt, the wilderness, or the desert.
Isaac used the same desert they cursed in order to MEDITATE!
So, that is my short list. Questions? Comments? Emendations? Things y’all would say differently?