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Hey everyone, it’s Adam DeGraide here in Kentucky live from Kentucky actually not live but recorded from Kentucky, just playing a golf tournament with my father, and I’m here with another micro motivation about the difference between mercy and justice.
So this is going to be a little religious today. So trigger warning, I might talk about my faith. But anyway, we played a tournament this week, my father and I had a three day tournament, we played nonstop golf for almost five days in a row, three days of the tournament. And we got towards the end of the tournament, we were in our last day, and we’re playing against a team and we got to the tenth hole. And we were putting in, we put our put in for par. And the other team thought that they didn’t have a chance to win. So they picked the ball up, they started to walk off the green and his partner said, Wait, what are you doing, we can still win the hole.
Now that’s a clear violation of rules, which says that picking up your ball used to run your [UNCLEAR] two strokes added, we would have won the hole, we would have won the match. And we would have ended up being in second place at a chance to play for the championship a few hours later. And my dad being a great guy, the guy that he is obviously, he says, You know what, guys, we’re going to let you replay it now me on the other hand, I was like, why would we do that we just won the tournament, it’s a violation of the rules.
Anyway, he goes ahead and lets them put they put it in they get the point long story short, we ended up in third place instead of them. And we’re out of the tournament, not in the pay. And I remember driving with my dad a little bit after that. And him saying it was the right thing to do. It was the sportsman thing to do. And I said, well, Dad, can you help me understand how it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do to follow the rules? Actually take the point and win, he goes, well I want it to be a blessing. I want it to be a testimony to people’s lives. And I understand that. And so I said, but could you tell me is there anything wrong in actually taking the victory in that case? And you sat there any thought about it for a while, and he said no, I guess there really isn’t.
And I said, you see, dad, there’s a difference between justice and mercy, Justice would have been us taking the point winning the tournament. And he goes, I know that you want to give God the glory for losing. We got to give God the glory for winning. And Mercy is giving them a second chance, something that they didn’t deserve, because they actually broke the rules. It reminds me of our own lives, is that every single one of us has sinned.
The Bible says it very clearly that all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God. But thanks be to Christ Jesus, we have somebody who came to earth, died on the cross for us, died and hung our sins to the cross so we might have life. You see, one day when we get to heaven, we broke the rules. We don’t deserve to get into heaven. We deserve justice. Yet Christ God sent His Son Jesus to the earth who died in our place, and therefore we have mercy.
So just like my dad gave that team mercy, Christ gave us mercy on the cross and we can know Him forever, which is amazing. So I would encourage you if you don’t know Jesus, think about it. You know, you’ve made a fallen from grace in your life. I know that I have many times and still, there’s always forgiveness, there’s always mercy, there’s always a second chance. Now in closing, I said to my dad, I know you want to give God the glory for the loss. But imagine if we won and at the end, we said, Thank God we won, but either way it would have been okay, justice or mercy. Thank God for mercy. Thanks for tuning in.
