Many years ago God changed my life by revealing Himself to me in a miraculous way. I was reflecting on the meaning of my life when God spoke to my heart. He asked me this question: “What is love?” To this I replied, “Love is a feeling”. In a gentle, quiet voice God said, “wrong”. So I reflected and asked God, “What is it then?” God said, “Love is a choice.”

At that point the Holy Spirit caused me to realize that if I wanted to find purpose in my life, I would have to start looking more closely at the choices I was making and consider whether my choices pleased God or not.

The first choice I made following my conversation with God was to begin studying the Bible.

Did you know that our eternal destiny is affected by the choices we make in this lifetime?

“For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.” Matthew 16:27

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” 2 Corinthians 5:10

The joy we experience in our eternal life is determined by the choices we make in this lifetime!

Love is a choice that honours God! Love is a choice to embrace God’s will and those choices affect not only our afterlife but also the world in which we live in today.

Now this may cause you to feel anxious. What if I make some wrong choices? How will I know whether I am doing God’s will?

God does not expect us to work alone. God wants us to understand that He Himself will help us to create a life of honour and purpose and the starting point is to SURRENDER AND TRUST HIM.

God is merciful. He knows we are not perfect and what He desires is for us to come to Him so that He can forgive us and purify our lives. God wants to live in us and to work in us. God Himself will awaken us to see the needs around us so that we can do what we can to address them. Maybe that means giving your time and money to helping the poor. Maybe that means making sacrifices to helping people in need. The needs in our world are so varied and so great and as God’s disciples we need to help God to address them.

As we consider what God calling us to do, let’s consider the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and what they consist of.

The 7 Corporal Works of Mercy are:

1. To feed the hungry.
2. To give drink to the thirsty.
3. To clothe the naked.
4. To shelter the homeless.
5. To visit the imprisoned.
6. To visit the sick.
7. To bury the dead.

The 7 Spiritual Works of Mercy are:

1. To instruct the ignorant;
2. To counsel the doubtful;
3. To admonish sinners;
4. To bear wrongs patiently;
5. To forgive offenses willingly;
6. To comfort the afflicted;
7. To pray for the living and the dead.

All of us are called as disciples of Jesus to be God’s hands and feet in the world and to allow God to use us to create a better world.

I wish we could all agree as a global community that abortion is killing a human life and that it is wrong! I wish we could put in place laws that would make taking the life of an unborn human life illegal! I wish we could make it easy for women to give up their unwanted children for adoption by loving, caring people.

We live in a world of high security threats. With the recent terror attacks in Brussels, in Pakistan and in other places in our world, politicians are increasing terror alerts and calling for vigilance and increased intelligence.

Well here’s an important piece of intelligence that only the ‘spiritually astute’ will understand:

If we want to do a better job at fighting terrorism and making the world a safer place, then we need to do a better job pleasing God.

If we were to take decisive steps to not allow women to legally choose to kill their unborn children, we would be making the world a safer place by stopping the demonic forces that want us to kill and murder.   In this way the power of evil in the world would be reduced. The forces of ‘good’ would win a battle against the forces of ‘evil’.

The womb should be a safe haven not a place of violence. The world should be a place of safety and respect, yet it is a place of violence and discrimination because the power of evil continues to prevail and the more people sin and make choices that offend God, the stronger the force of evil becomes.

Only God can silence the forces of evil that cause every form of violence and if we cooperate with God’s will the world will become safer for all of us. This means we have to make the choice to love and stop sinning.

The choices we make today not only affect our afterlife, they affect our global condition.

There are so many children who do not go to school in developing countries, yet in some of those places humanitarian organizations are in place to pay for school fees, to educate teachers, to build schools and to enable the next generation to learn so they can be productive and live up to their potential. How important is that! Maybe you can sponsor a child in the developing world and in this small way you make a choice called LOVE and God wins a battle against the devil who would prefer that children be drawn into terrorist organizations versus classrooms where they can learn about human rights and how to contribute positively to their community and world.

When I first started studying the Bible, this Scripture caused me to pause and really think:

Jesus said, “But keep on storing up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moths and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal,” Matthew 6:20

I realized as I thought about my life that I was building up by bank account, and I had no understanding of what building up ‘treasure in heaven’ meant.

When I first started trying to build up my ‘treasure in heaven’ I will confess to you that I began with a selfish orientation. I was worried that I would have no treasure in heaven so I began trying to figure out what I should do so I would have some. I admit that I am embarrassed to tell you that the starting point of the spiritual journey was selfish, i.e., I was still thinking about ‘what’s in it for me’. But I gladly admit my shortcomings so you don’t think I am trying to preach from a place of moral superiority; I admit that I am just a sinner who God has saved.

At the beginning of my spiritual journey I started thinking about what choices could I make to please God so I could build some treasure in heaven. I am a very driven women and if I set my mind to something I persevere and after God told me that ‘love is a choice’ I figured I better realize that God was giving me a ‘wake-up’ call and so now I am trying to share that ‘wake-up’ call with anyone who wants to listen.

Over the course of a decade more miracles happened. God kept humbling me as I looked upon people who were suffering so much. I met homeless youth and they told me of their problems and I wanted to help them. I spoke to the suicidal in a distress center and I wanted to give them hope. I realized I could help orphan children and I supported the humanitarian organizations on the ground to help them. I spoke to women who grieved their abortion and I cried with them. I met Jesus over and over again through the suffering people in our world and I wanted to help them not because it would build up my treasure in heaven but just because I loved them.

As I fell deeper and deeper in love with Jesus, He asked me to meditate upon His Passion. It was an experience that at first I resisted and I struggled with. I didn’t want to think about Jesus suffering, but once again God spoke to my heart. This time the words I kept hearing were ‘Honour Me’. I realized that if I was to be a true disciple I would need to go to Calvary and walk next to the Mother of Jesus as I grieved my sins and the sins of the world.

Now you may want to ask me ‘why grieve, when Jesus died to save you?’ And my answer is I grieve my sins because Jesus had to suffer so much to save us!

As I walked the Way to Calvary, I listened as Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane to be spared from this vicious, brutal, torturous death, yet He surrendered to God’s will. I witnessed in my heart’s contemplation of the Passion of Christ a struggle between the humanity of Our Lord and the divinity of Our Lord and I realized how much pain He carried for our salvation. How very, very much Jesus loves us!

On the Way to Calvary, I saw Jesus being scourged for our sins and again I grieved the horrible suffering He had to embrace to set us free. I watched Jesus carry His Cross up the mountain falling under the weight of the Cross and I saw Him valiant and determined, yet suffering so much. Stripped of His clothing, Jesus was forced to lie down on the Cross made from the tree that He had created, to be crucified by His own people. As I listened to His cries, I cried with Him and as I contemplate His crucifixion I cry over and over again.

And as they crucified Him, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34

If we REALLY knew the consequences of our sins, we would stop sinning! If we could REALLY look at Jesus on the Cross and see His eyes and His pain we would fall in love with Him!

And that’s what happened to me. I fell in love with Jesus and I came to realize that Jesus is the treasure in heaven. All I want is Jesus! All I want is a relationship with Our Saviour Jesus Christ who would love all of us so much that He would die for us. And in coming to love Jesus, I came to consider the pain of being separated from Him in the afterlife, so I committed to become a ‘Soldier of Christ’ fighting for souls that Satan wants with him in hell.

The Mercy Movement is a global Christian peace movement and a global call to pray for the Holy Spirit to come upon our world and silence the forces of darkness that cause so much sin and violence and pain in our world. The Mercy Movement  is all about praying for God’s grace to create the type of change that gives our lives new meaning. Jesus came into the world to save us from our sins and to give us a new heart with His Holy Spirit living within us and that’s nothing short of a revolution that happens one soul at a time. And as one person changes and turns away from sin, the world becomes safer and more enlightened by the grace of God.

Every disciple of Jesus is called to intercede for the salvation of souls. That means we are all called to pray for one another and to discover the great love of Jesus, Our Lord. Let us all honour Him by stopping everyday to remember His Passion, at the time He died for us, 3pm, in our local time zones.

The choices we make today affect our world and they affect our eternal life. Let’s make choices to honour God:  let us repent of sins, pray, do good works, forgive and be merciful and just.