Mercy & The Principle of Fulfillment – Areas of Weakness

Welcome to Mercy & The Principle of Fulfillment – Areas of Weakness. In the previous Describing the Gift articles –

• Mercy & The Principle of Fulfillment – Describing the Gift and
• Mercy & The Principle of Fulfillment – Describing the Gift – Part 2 –

the overview largely focused on the redemptive function of Mercy’s birthright as God designed it to be.

In learning about the redemptive gifts, it is vital to recognize each gift has a purpose and a perversion. That is why I keep the gift’s birthright before us, for it is the plumbline God established for each gift’s alignment. In other words, the new creation life we have been given as believers re-born in spirit from above. (John 3:5-6)

Mercy’s Birthright*
“To release the holiness of God into their environment.
To come into the presence of God and worship God in all of life.”

DEFINITION OF PERVERSION

Perversion is not a welcome term when speaking about God’s grace gifts. We much prefer language like purpose, passion, blessing, discovery, pleasure, niche, fulfillment, etc. Components of what I have coined redemptive living and why I urge embracing one’s grace-gifts design for growth and spiritual development.

The truth is that perversion hails back to the Garden. Perversion means distortion, misrepresentation, corruption, and even injury. It is what the Serpent, from his lying, deceptive nature, utilized to bring Adam and Eve out of alignment with all the Lord God had set in place and enjoyed in unbroken fellowship with them. The first legitimacy lie was uttered by Satan, casting shade on God’s trustworthiness and tempting them to bend to a distorted, misrepresented perception. It worked. In those moments, their God-given hardwiring was corrupted.

Humanity’s collective journey is marked as one of seeking or resisting a way back to the Father of Life and Light.

Dynamics of the Battle

Our study of the redemptive gifts as really, the study of God and what His nature and character is like, will be unbalanced and detrimental without knowing dynamics of the battle introduced by the perversion of each gift. That is why all seven overviews focus on the redemptive, God-ordained outworking of the grace gift, with examination of traits of the perversion of the grace gift that inhibits and prevents its true, righteous expression.

To be clear – we are not called to approve¹ the study of darkness.** We do not come to know the Father heart of Elohiym while consumed only with taking out our spiritual or natural enemy. As believers in Christ Jesus, we have been brought out of the kingdom of darkness into God’s Light. As children of the light, we are called to walk in that light. We can rest assured that living in our Father’s Light will make plain to our understanding what is of darkness.^2,3 This is first, personal, as it impacts redemptive release for us, and to the Body of Christ and the world.

mercy’s major Areas of Weakness

Noted on the Mercy redemptive gift checklist as major weaknesses, they represent Mercy’s battlegrounds. They are the enemy’s tools of choice to keep Mercy from walking in their authority – intimacy with God and alignment.

Impurity

Designed by God for intimacy of soul, transcending to the physical. Mercy desires and needs pure hugs and touch.

Perversion (distortion, misrepresentation, corruption, injury) of God’s design for pure expressions of intimacy can set up this first area of weakness: that the Mercy’s desire for intimacy and physical touch may lead to impurity. Inasmuch as sexual impurity is evidence of the perversion, so is impurity of thought, speech, motivation, mindset. The outer impure manifestations whatever form they take, were rooted internally resulting from woundedness. It takes time in God’s presence of pure love and truth to set right what is out of alignment in spirit, soul, and body.

Enabling

Designed by God to be a safe person for those who are wounded and can take initiative toward wounded ones. The Mercy is the most sensitive of all the gifts, which can be a blessing – or not, when misaligned in the flesh.

Perversion of the gift is wanting to either flee and/or protect others from pain in ways that God never intended or is not of His will. Enabling comes with its own double-edged sword: it binds both the enabled and the enabler. “Seated with Christ” does not mean usurping His enthronement – for one’s own life or for the lives of others. It does mean the Mercy Seat is where the battle is first fought and surrendered. Enabling produces the opposite of Father God’s intent to build maturity and wholeness in a person. Unresolved fathering issues and avoidance of pain may be key factors. The Father and the Son are the solution, for Christ is the firm foundation upon which a life built can stand.

A growth point for the immature Mercy caught in impurity and/or enabling is learning to please God rather than becoming or remaining a people-pleaser. A blog post written in the past speaks more to this fine line issue of point the way vs in the way.

Compromise

Designed by God to absorb God’s light, truth, purity, and holiness and carry and release it into one’s environment.

How religiously lofty that sounds to the soul; when instead, it is a crucial design facet for the spirit. This is an area where the Mercy needs to gain some righteous weight and wisdom to live in holiness without compromise.

Perversion of the Mercy gift through compromise is especially insidious. Compromise is a willingness to live with a mixture of holy and unholy, at the expense of not dealing with it in oneself, nor calling people to do what is right. Compromise undermines credibility and stokes powerlessness. No religious spirit or ungodliness can stand in God’s presence. The Mercy who desires to live from their design and not their wounding will find conviction at every point of compromise. Perversion says, ‘that sounds harsh and painful.’ Unaddressed, compromise prevails.

The truth is that God’s intensity is related to His intention for the Mercy – whose Wisdom principle is Fulfillment.

Non-Confrontational

Designed by God to bring comfort and to bring the community into alignment with God. This design aspect of the Mercy portion is essential for one’s own community of the human spirit, as it is for the community of others too.

The Mercy checklist is helpful for identifying behaviors and traits that the Mercy uses to let themselves, and others, ‘off the hook’ with false comfort. This is an aberration of God’s design that hinders Mercy’s fulfillment.

God designed the Mercy to engage all their abilities (spirit, soul, and body) to overcome the right problems and obstacles He designed for them to solve. This becomes most applicable when personalized. It is proportionate to the good works He prepared for you for which He designed you.⁴ You are His best design for His calling upon you.

The perversion of non-confrontation does little to move the Mercy in the direction of fulfillment. It leaves relationships unattended and unrepaired; it has a way of leaving many things in a state of incompleteness. Though it may provide false comfort, the effect of the perversion is underachievement, frustration, and futility.

Ultimately, the Mercy can be life-giving when they want to. Yet their propensity to stubbornness can lead to resist doing the very things God has called them to do. The tendency to non-confrontation is best addressed, first, in the place where Mercy is designed to be most at home. At the Mercy Seat with Christ.

~ Nancy

*A. Burk/C. Wales description of Mercy’s birthright

^** darkness: wickedness, demonic empowering, dark arts, etc.; to give oneself as a believer in Christ to the study of darkness places you on the same level of darkness without understanding how the Father operates in Light. The redemptive gifts point always to Him who is Light.

¹ Romans 12:2 & II Timothy 2:15               ² I John 1:5-10              ³ Ephesians 5:1-21                     ⁴ Ephesians 2:10

Click here for a printable PDF of this article: Mercy & The Principle of Fulfillment – Areas of Weakness