Bobby Bosler: Welcome to Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, speaking to you today from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.

I’m just getting started with the Summer of the Cola Clash all over the country. We have trained our team already, consisting of Daniel Gilmore, Simeon Schoultz, Violet Ward, and Annie Brock. They’re trained up. They’ve completed one week under their belt this summer. It’s been amazing to see God work. Just last week we were in Bacchus, Minnesota. The Lord worked. We had a hard time finding people but God knew where they were and He knew those who He wanted us to talk to. We’re grateful for the lost people who came, heard the gospel, and trusted Christ. It was exciting to see.

There was a group of four or five that came from and Indian reservation. They heard the gospel, and the way everyone who talked to them described it, they were like a sponge soaking up the truth.  And it was neat to see all of them actually get saved. There was another young man named John. He may be listening right now perhaps, but it was exciting for him to realize that the religion he had grown up with wasn’t giving him the answers, but that the Bible truly contained them and that, in fact, Jesus himself was the answer, and faith in Him alone was the way to receive eternal life, just like the Bible said. I was excited to see John get excited about finding the truth, finally. In fact, he was an answer to our prayer. We’d been praying for God to lead us to young people who were searching already for the truth and that the message they’d hear would be the answer to their own longings. And so that was exciting to see.

We were able to minister in St. Cloud, Minnesota over the weekend and just run some youth activities and preach for the Granite City Baptist Church. And here we are, a little bit of rest and reprieve. We’ve got a week opening, and I and my family, I know, as soon as I close up shop here recording, we’re actually going to get away for a few days and try to have some rest and relaxation and then hit it hard on Saturday with nine weeks in a row of Cola Clashes everywhere from Illinois to Tennessee and about everywhere in between. So if you think of it, pray for us, pray that God will bless our ministry, that God will hold our rigs together, oh boy, and pray that God will hold us together and use us in the harvest fields to win young people to Christ. I would encourage you to go to ColaClash.org and check out our schedule and see if you’re gonna be anywhere near any of those places that we’re gonna be at. If you are nearby, even within driving distance, we’d love for you to join us for Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, each one of those weeks, 6 – 9 p.m. at the Cola Clash. I think it’ll encourage you to see what God is doing and what He has done, just to feel a part of it.

The thing that I have on my heart here today, I’m honestly not exactly sure how this is going to come out, but this is something God has been working in my heart about quite a bit over the last several weeks and really the last several months. And something I’m going to, there’s an article a friend of mine gave to me that I felt was very, very helpful. You know, sometimes in life you recognize wrong where you see it, whether that’s in your family and your siblings, whether that’s out on the road, whether that’s in perhaps your own home, in your school, in your class, or in your church. And in the process of recognizing wrong, oftentimes we react to that wrong in the flesh. We see something that ticks us off and so we can get mad and maybe we yell at somebody in our car or in our bedroom or hopefully not in our church. But when we see something that, to us, from our standpoint seems wrong or even destructive, and maybe we’re right in our identification of it as being something that’s wrong and hurtful and destructive, we can react to that in impatience, in fleshly anger. We can maybe our tempers rise and we fly off the handle or maybe we say a comment that we shouldn’t say and we’re harsh, or unkind, or perhaps at times we blow up. I think all of us recognize that’s the wrong response to wrong. I’ve heard it said all throughout my growing up years, and I’m sure you have too, that two wrongs don’t make a right. And yet sometimes when we see wrongs that are going on around us and we see the consequences or the fallout, how the shrapnel hurts people. It makes us mad. And we look at it and we think, they shouldn’t be doing this, or they shouldn’t have said that, or they shouldn’t have handled that situation in this way. And we can be tempted to respond too wrong with more wrong.

Well, if you’re like me, maybe you’re prone to that. Maybe you’re prone to this other reaction that we can have too wrong, and that is the non-reaction. Maybe you’re the kind of person that just feels like, well, I’m not able to do anything about this and we just kind of settle and we ignore what’s going on. We ignore the wrong and the hurt that’s happening around us. Perhaps you, like me, have found yourself maybe when you recognize the wrong you can respond to the wrong in the wrong way and instead of flying off the handle or getting mad or upset or saying something that you will regret you’ve learned and you’ve decided you know what? I’m just gonna keep my mouth shut, my big fat mouth shut. And instead of responding to wrong with wrong, we respond to wrong by ignoring it. With nothing, we do nothing. We sit there and wrong is happening before our very eyes, and we just pretend like it’s not there. Or perhaps we justify it, rationalize it, perhaps we say, well, maybe it’s not as bad as I think it is, or maybe I’m misunderstanding the circumstances and in the aim of giving the benefit of the doubt, we can at times ignore real and true, genuine, wrong.

You know, I don’t know about you, but neither of those situations, neither of those responses to wrong actually help the situation at all. It doesn’t help the situation to get fleshly when you see something wrong going on. It doesn’t help the situation to ignore it when you see something wrong going on. So what in the world are we supposed to do?

Well, this article that was sent to me is by a man, and again, I can’t vouch for this guy. All I know is that this article is really helpful. A man named David Pallison in the Journal of Biblical Counseling, Volume 24, Number 4, Fall 2006. He has an article entitled, The Constructive Displeasure of Mercy. And again, while I don’t know all of the background of this author, and I can’t necessarily say that he gets everything right and everything that he says, this article for me was paradigm shifting.

Young people, I don’t want you to think, oh, he’s quoting from the Journal of Biblical Counseling. Wow, this is beyond me. No, there’s a very simple solution to this problem. We can be indifferent about what’s going on. We can respond with fleshly anger to things that are going wrong. But instead of responding in either of those ways, we need to respond in mercy.

That’s really the whole crux of this article, is that we shouldn’t get angry, we shouldn’t be indifferent, we certainly shouldn’t have pleasure in the wrong that’s being done, but we need to respond with mercy. But here’s the thing that we think about oftentimes when we think about mercy, we think of mercy as an absence of wrath. And we can tend to think that mercy would be me not telling them all of the angry things that I think they deserve to hear. That’s not mercy. Indifference isn’t mercy because mercy ends up affecting good for those you’re being merciful towards. If you think about God’s mercy when it comes to Jesus and the cross, mercy for God was God doing something that actually solved or resolved or fixed the wrong.

You see, mercy was constructive. And furthermore, if you think about it this way, God in Him giving mercy to us, He also did something about the wrong itself. Again, there’s so much more. I don’t wanna read the article here to you. In fact, I don’t even just wanna make quotes from the article. I wanna get the point across of really what God has been working in my heart. The author does say this though. He says there are four aspects of this complex, paradoxical thing that I will call the constructive displeasure of mercy and he says essentially there are four aspects to mercy when you see wrong. I’ll give you the four and then we’ll expand upon them. One is patience, the other is forgiveness the next is charity and the fourth is constructive conflict. Now these four terms are very helpful. They sound good, but oftentimes I think we can not fully understand the biblical sense of these words. So let me read a couple of things that he has to say about these four aspects to mercy. 

First, he talks about patience. He says patience is a curious opposite to anger. When you’re truly patient, you agree with the moral evaluation that anger makes. That’s wrong. What you’re doing does not please me. It offends me. It’s true patience is not aggression and attack mode, of course, but true patience is not about passivity, indifference, any placid tolerance of evils. You do not peacefully put up with bad things. It’s not an easygoing tolerance and neutrality. It does not accept anything and affirm everything. Patience hates what’s happening and rolls up its sleeves to redress what is wrong. See, patience sees wrong, but is slow to anger. In another place he says patience is an intelligent feeling act. In fact, when you’re patient, you often see the wrong more clearly. You often feel its knife edge more keenly. You actually notice more wrongs, deeper wrongs, truer wrongs than when you react resentfully. But here’s what patience does. It doesn’t react right away. It doesn’t have a short fuse. It doesn’t react the same way anger reacts. He says one component of patience is forbearance. It means to hang in there with people or events that remain wrong. It’s committed to change the world slowly, not simply to endure the world. It’s not being a doormat, okay? It is forbearance, which is courageous. It’s clear-minded. It exhibits the dignity of a choice. It’s powerful but non-retaliatory even while continuing to experience pain and unfairness. It forbears while never losing either the hope of altering or the intention of repairing what is so wrong. He says it this way, which is very helpful. The willingness to work over the long haul is the first piece of the constructive displeasure of mercy. 

Young person, I want you to think about this. You see wrong around you. That wrong is not going to be solved by you blowing up. That wrong is not going to be solved by you ignoring it. But whatever the solution is, it’s probably, especially the trickier it gets and the more ingrained it might be in another person’s thinking or character, it’s not going to be fixed right away. It’s going to require a long solution. See, the constructive displeasure of mercy, this willingness to not blow up or ignore it, but to actually find a solution recognizes the fact that this problem will probably not be solved in one conversation or even a week’s worth of conversations or even a year’s worth of conversations. It’s something you’re going to have to hang in there for to get the good solution. 

Another aspect, the second one is forgiveness. He defines forgiveness in this way. It’s a courageous, clear-minded choice to be mercifully unfair. It doesn’t ignore what’s wrong. It doesn’t excuse what’s wrong. It doesn’t pretend that the person didn’t really mean it. It doesn’t say, oh, it’s okay when it wasn’t okay. It doesn’t just tolerate what’s wrong. Instead, recognizing I owe you, you forgive the debt. This for me, oh man, when it comes to forgiveness, sometimes so often, you know, we force kids to say, I forgive you, you know, but they don’t really mean it. They’re not letting anything go, okay? They say the words. But it’s like this: Forgiveness recognizes that what you did to me or what’s being done or what’s going on is wrong. It doesn’t diminish that. But it says, instead of giving you what you should get, I’m gonna give you something better. I’m gonna give you mercy. I am going to literally give you the opposite of what should happen. I’m going to choose intentionally to let go of this, to give you mercy. True forgiveness looks wrong in the eye, he says. It makes no excuses, but it does not hold the offenses against you. It lets you go when it could hang on, it covers over when it could hold it over you. True forgiveness is not a cover-up. It doesn’t pretend that everything’s okay. Forgiveness is a conscious choice. It clearly recognizes that what happened was wrong. You did what you should not have done, or I did what I should not have done. It makes no excuses for what happened, and then it lets it go. So we’ve got so far patience recognizing that, okay, I see a wrong and the solution isn’t gonna be a quick fix. It does the unfair thing by truly recognizing this is wrong, but I’m not gonna hold it against you. I’m going to forgive, I’m going to let it go. 

And then he has the third aspect, charity, which is undeserved acts of kindness and generosity. He says this: Charity towards the person who does the wrong is the third aspect of mercy. Anger operates out of a strictly punitive sense of fairness and justice. Charity agrees. That’s wrong, but then does some undeserved, generous act of kindness. 

In other words, you see the person that did the wrong and instead of slapping them in the face, instead of telling them what for, ripping them up one side down the other, tearing their face off, whatever you want to say, instead you recognize, okay, this isn’t going to be fixed right away. Okay. You deserve to be punished, but I am instead going to let this go and then I’m actually going to treat you with true love. Not just pretend like I have the feelings; I’m actually going to do something that is kind and merciful and full of generosity towards you.

Okay, he gives some summary statements here and leading into the fourth point. He says, patience makes you hang in there through the process. Forgiveness makes you let go of getting even or holding on to bitterness. Charity makes you generous to those who do not deserve kindness. But these three mercies don’t make you nice, they make you the right kind of tough, able to do the fourth mercy, constructive anger.

I love what he says here. The displeasure of mercy enters forcefully into conflict in order to redeem. There’s no one-word summary for this most rare form of goodness, this forthright problem-solving that goes about seeking to right what is wrong. It means to step into wrong with conviction and force, tackling evils head on. It means a willingness to start a conflict and to go through the process of conflict with evident constructive purposes. You raise the problem that wrong creates, do that in the right kind of way, and you create the right kind of trouble.

Wow, you know sometimes we think that to create trouble is to make things worse, but sometimes to create trouble is to make things better. 

I don’t know; there are some folks who I think don’t like trouble to be created because they’re the ones who are the wrongdoers, if you will. And whenever there’s conflict, they assume there’s something wrong. But young people, what this is saying is, listen there are people in your life that if you just ignore the problems, the problems will get worse. If you react to the problems, the problems will get worse. But if you, with a heart of generosity and patience, with a heart that is determined not to hold it against them, I’m not entering into conflict to make you worse or to make you pay or to make you feel the pain.

Of what you cause, I’m entering into this conflict because I want what is best for you and what’s best for everyone around you. I genuinely want your good, so we’re going to talk about this. I genuinely want your blessing, so I can’t ignore this any longer. I am here for your good, so I’m not going to shut up. I’m going to put up, and we’re going to talk about this because I love you too much to ignore it anymore.

There’s so much of this article that I would love to read, but I feel like you, I can’t read it all because you need to be able to read it yourself. He makes a statement; he says, constructive conflict is part of the redemption of a bad situation. It is the only merciful alternative to giving up in exhaustion, disgust, and raw anger.

I want you to think about this. In fact, you know what? Let me read this. This paragraph I think is super helpful. He says, in the same way I’ve known adult children who, in the constructive displeasure of mercy, took on irascible, selfish, ignorant, immature parents. They hung in there. They forgave. They gave, and they rolled up their sleeves and confronted the problem. The parent was an abrasive, drunken, self-pitying fool. The children had good reasons for anger. They didn’t like what was going on one bit. They blew it at times, but in the end, their anger at real wrong became wise and loving, merciful and firm, rather than becoming sour and embittered. I’ve known wives and husbands who redemptively confronted a spouse who was lazy, deceitful, domineering, hostile, or immoral. I’ve known friends who redemptively took on a longtime friend who was now acting like a fool and treating them all like enemies. All these people could have given fair and just reasons for giving into disgust and wrath, reasons for giving up, but all these people show the constructive displeasure of mercy. They treated the wrongdoer, quote, unfairly, like a vast and generous unfairness of the God who had loved them. 

Psalm 103:10 says, He has not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

You know, young people, immaturity is going to handle this wrong. I’ll just say that. Immaturity in the desire to resolve problems will create worse problems, but young person as you grow and as you walk with Jesus and as you surrender to him, you’re going to realize that Jesus is committed to genuinely resolving problems and fixing issues. And Jesus will at some point call you to step into situations that are beyond your pay grade, beyond your experience, beyond your maturity level or expertise. And he’s going to cause you to roll up your sleeves and deal with it. NowI’m not calling you young people to turn around to mom and dad and say, you shouldn’t have said that to dad. That was wrong. I remember one time I did that to my mom. She was saying some things about my dad and how he didn’t clean the pool or whatever. And I remember I stopped and I said, mom, you shouldn’t talk about dad like that. And my mom was Irish. She had a temper. And let’s just say that didn’t make anything better. I’ll be honest with you. In that moment, I was not wise or loving or even trying to fix anything. I thought it was cute to say that, and I felt like I was right. I was a little evangelist at that time, calling it as I saw it. That didn’t make the situation better. Please don’t get a wrong picture of this. This is not some rogue hotshot that steps into every problem that he feels he sees to fix it and to shoot his guns like some Western gunslinger to make things right and to have vigilante justice. No, no, no, no. This is a person who perhaps has prayed for a long time about the resolution of an issue he’s been aware of, an issue that he’s hoped would resolve itself, an issue that he’s felt is hurting the cause, an issue that perhaps is not helping people accomplish the goals that they’re trying to accomplish. This is a person who perhaps recognizes there may be blind spots in those around them, real, genuine blind spots. A person who recognizes somebody genuinely may not understand how they’re hurting other people or maybe they do know how they’re hurting other people. But this person recognizes that the most loving thing for me to do is not to get angry and blow up or walk out. It’s not to just pretend that it isn’t there any longer but to step in with acts of kindness and love and mercy and to say, can we talk about this? I may not be the answer. I may not be the solution. But I want to be a part of it.

You know, young person, I feel as I read this article, for me, it just solved so many questions in my own mind. So often we can be a little bit self-demeaning and sell ourselves short in the sense that we just can be so humble and say, well, I’m sure I can be a part of any solution. Listen, young people, did you know that being a part of the generation is being a part of the solution for all mankind? Did you know that sometimes to lead somebody to Christ, it involves getting into it in a way that might rock the boat a little bit with that person. You realize that? Sometimes people don’t want to be told that they’re sinners on their way to hell, that their good works aren’t good enough. They never will be. Sometimes people don’t like that. And yet I think all of us recognize that when it comes to the gospel, the most loving, kind, and merciful thing we can do is to “get into it” with a lost person. Not in an angry way, not in an abrasive way, but in a way that makes it clear what’s really true about the situation and what’s really wrong about their sin and what’s really wrong about what they’ve been trying to do to fix it. That’s the most loving thing you can do. And sometimes in our relationships with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, with that same love and care and tenderness, we’ve got to “get into it”. We have got to talk about it. Nobody around us will talk about it; we’ve got to talk about it. Not because we want to be the hero, not because we think we’re the solution for everyone on this planet. But because God has called us to be peacemakers.

Young person, God wants you to make a difference in many ways in this world. God wants you to surrender to Him, to be what He’s called you to be, and to do what He’s called you to do in dependence upon His power to actually bring resolution where there has been wrong.

Young people, we are to be world changers. And that will not happen without the constructive displeasure of mercy.

Please don’t make a big issue. Please don’t blow things up. Young people don’t be a bull in a china shop. But don’t ignore the wrong either. God will give you wisdom. God will help you do what’s right. As you listen to his voice and obey his word, and follow him into the frame. Thanks for listening.