There Is More Mercy Than You Know

An Introduction to the God Is Merciful Reading Plan

Of all the things Scripture says about who God is, mercy may be the one most worth sitting with slowly.

It’s worth sitting with because most of us have only received a fraction of what is actually available. We know the word. We use it in worship and in prayer. We offer it to each other as comfort in hard moments. But there is a difference between knowing that God is merciful and actually standing inside that mercy — letting it reach the specific things you are carrying, the specific places that are still tender, the specific version of yourself you have been reluctant to bring to Him.

That difference is what this month is about.

What Mercy Actually Means

Before we go further, it is worth naming what mercy actually is — because the most common understanding of it is smaller than what Scripture describes.

Many of us have absorbed a picture of mercy as restraint: God seeing what we deserve and choosing, generously, not to act on it. Mercy as a punishment withheld.

But the Hebrew word at the heart of the Old Testament’s mercy language is hesed — a word that appears over 200 times and carries the meaning of steadfast, covenant love that moves toward people. Active. Relentless. Loyal in a way that does not give up even when the other person has.

Mercy, in the biblical sense, is not God holding back from you. It is God refusing to hold back from you. It is less about what He withholds and more about what He keeps giving — compassion, presence, care, and the kind of love that runs toward you while you are still a long way off.

That is the mercy this reading plan is about — and there is more of it than you know.

What You Will Find in These Thirty Days

Receiving mercy is a practice. It is not something that happens automatically once we understand it theologically. It is something we grow into, slowly, by returning again and again to the places in Scripture where mercy shows up and letting it do its work.

That is what this month’s reading plan is designed to do.

Over thirty days you will move through passages that show mercy from every angle. You will sit with the great mercy texts of the Psalms — written by people who were not doing well and knew it. You will spend time in Luke, where Jesus moves toward person after person that respectable society had written off, and watch what mercy looks like when it arrives in person. You will read the prophets who dared to describe God as one who delights to show mercy — not reluctantly, not minimally, but with something that can only be called delight. And you will end the month in the places where mercy becomes most personal: forgiveness received, dignity restored, and the quiet but extraordinary invitation to let it actually reach you.

A Few Thoughts Before You Begin

Read with yourself in mind as much as the text. These passages are not abstract theology. They are descriptions of a God who is moving toward you specifically, in whatever you are carrying right now.

Let the Luke passages slow you down. Jesus’ interactions with people in that Gospel are extraordinarily detailed — the body language, the setting, the specific words used. Read them as scenes, not just as doctrine. Notice who is in the room. Notice who Jesus looks at first.

If a passage lands uncomfortably — if mercy feels too good to be true on a particular day — that discomfort is worth sitting with. It is often pointing directly at the place where the most important work is happening.

Mercy is not too good to be true. It is simply too good to receive quickly. Take the thirty days. Let it reach you.