When I was young, I often played the game Mercy. It's a simple game, really.

You and your opponent take both of your hands and intertwine them with each other's. You then proceed to bend them back trying to "win the game." When it starts to hurt beyond what you can handle, you merely yell, "Mercy!" and your opponent stops. Whoever yells "Mercy!" is the loser.

Webster defines mercy as this: Compassion shown to an offender; imprisonment rather than death imposed as penalty for first-degree murder.

In the Christian life, we are far from losers when we are given mercy. Not only was Christ's sacrifice on the cross full of grace, but also full of mercy! We deserved that cross, not Jesus. We are the offenders, not Him. But God showed us his amazing compassion by not giving us what we deserve.

We readily accept that mercy from God and are so thankful that we aren't given what we truly deserve. But as fast as we receive God's mercy in our lives, we have a hard time extending it to others--for example, when we don't forgive someone for hurting us, even though we've been forgiven so much (Romans 5:8).

Or when we...

Whenever someone makes a donation to help AllWorship broadcast free Christian music around the world, we give them a token of our appreciation: the ability to listen to our premium stream. There is a much higher quality sound on the premium stream. And we have recently made a significant change on the premium stream. We have eliminated any talking after you log on, so you just hear music. The programming flows from one great song to another, with no interruptions. If you'd like to help keep our ministry on the air, you can do so here.

Some encouraging emails we received in September from our listeners around the world:

Location: Unknown
Comments: I am so thankful that you have God's vision to make praise and worship music available to listeners 24/7 commercial-free. I am a freelance journalist whom God has called and your station sets my atmosphere so that I can hear His guidance and direction for each piece that I write and produce pieces that have His special mark on them. These are pieces that are hand-crafted from Heaven, that I could never produce on my own; and I am truly thankful. Thank you for your ministry to me and all of your listeners.

Location: Mtunzini, the east coast of South Africa
Comments: Love listening to your music while I work. Thanks and Blessings.

Location: Maine
Comments: I want to thank you so very much. I thank God for finding you. I am having a very hard time dealing with the loss of my husband of 36 years. I have AllWorship on all the time and your music helps me deal with my grief. May everyone with your ministry be blessed many times over.