"Jubilee Cards" about Mercy
Minute-a-day stretching exercises that combine
the Mercy Declaration with verses & prayers
Jubilee Cards put SYNC content at your fingertips in a form you can use for a quick exercise routine. If you print a copy, you can do the exercise to set the tone for your day before you even pick up your phone in the morning.
Or do them on your phone whenever you can seize a window of opportunity--at the breakfast table, in personal devotions, in a one-minute pause before you get in your car, or in many other settings alone or with friends.
Set a merciful tone for your day
The cards help you exercise your right to declare what kind of a day you are going to have instead of letting your circumstances impose it on you. They SYNC you with each seasonal theme as you go through the year.
Seven of the fifty cards go with Mercy Season. Let these cards remind you who you are--an agent of God's mercy, part of his campaign to spread his transforming mercy across the world.
How to cancel evil
If we fight evil with evil, evil wins! It is trying to multiply itself, and we are helping it do that. But if we fight evil with mercy, we kill it without using any new evil or violence. Jesus wins, and we win with him. That is the mercy strategy that Jesus launched on the cross and sealed on the final Day of Atonement.
Lots of good things happen when you get that on your mind, and that's what the Jubilee Cards do--they get the mercy of Jesus on your mind.
Pleasurable exercise
Using a Jubilee Card to set the tone for your day is like humming an old favorite song, moving with its rhythm. Then you go dancing out into your day, and the joy inside you gives you strength to rise above the not so joyful things that may hit you during the day.
Remember that the cards are not describing mercy as an ideal, and you are not beating yourself up all day saying, "I've got to be more merciful. I've got to be more merciful." The cards are declaring something that God has already done. Jesus died to show us mercy. It's over. God's mercy has been delivered to earth, and now we get to deliver some of it to others.
You can't overdose on the medicine these cards give you, so repeat this one-minute exercise later in the day as often as needed.
Improve your sleep
The benefits of physical exercise for sleep are well documented. These mercy exercises have the same effect, and you may want to repeat them at bedtime. It's a great time to thank Jesus for showing us mercy that we did not deserve.
As forgiven people, we get to become forgiving people. We do not get stressed out any more by thinking either that we have to earn our forgiveness or that we have to find a way to take revenge on someone. No, our emotions don't get stuck in those mudholes!
With or without the Jubilee Cards, we can look back at our day and thank God that he forgave our mistakes and enabled us to forgive other people. A clean slate is a very comfortable bed to sleep on.
Exercise instructions
Each card helps us fight evil with mercy by giving us a declaration, a verse, and a prayer
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The Mercy Declaration (same every day) sets the tone for our day, linking us to the sacrificial mercy of Jesus and our role in God's mercy campaign
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Each verse (different each day) tells us something about God's mercy at work on earth
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Each prayer relates to the verse
SYNC with these seven Jubilee Cards and discover a new mercy-filled life.
Seven Bible verses that stretch our mercy muscles
The first verse in the set of seven "Mercy Verses" on the Jubilee Cards is a great warm-up exercise for the other six. It tells us the reason we can make the "Mercy Declaration" at all:
But God has shown us how much he loves us—it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us! Romans 5.8
That first verse sets the tempo of the Mercy Rhythm that we exercise to. The "Mercy Declaration" on each card is a reminder of God's totally amazing, totally underserved mercy.
God did not send Jesus to earth because humans had finally done enough good deeds to deserve him. We hadn't. Jesus came because God knew we needed help. We were never going to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. But instead of writing us off as losers, God had mercy on us.
The other six verses on these Jubilee Cards are snippets from all over the Bible that show the God of the Bible as a promoter of mercy, with King Jesus leading the charge to spread news of the grace period, a new era of mercy for the world.
God's Mercy Rhythm is not monotonous. It is complex and vibrant. It takes some time to get our minds around it, but that doesn't matter. We can love it before we understand it all if we move with the parts we understand, and the Jubilee Cards get us into motion.
Print cards from the list below or from the Word file. The Word version includes graphics and is formatted to print on 8 1/2 x 11 business card stock or ordinary paper.
Sunday
SYNC Card 29
The Mercy Declaration
I see myself in Christ as a mercy agent.
I see this day as a day to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, and to live like it matters.
God’s Word
I put my love on the line for you, ________, by offering my Son in sacrificial death for you when you didn’t deserve it at all.
Adapted from The Message paraphrase of Romans 5.8
Thank you, King Jesus, for your merciful self-sacrifice for us. It still astonishes us. We can never thank you enough.
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Monday
SYNC Card 30
The Mercy Declaration
I see myself in Christ as a mercy agent.
I see this day as a day to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, and to live like it matters.
God’s Word
I bypassed all the sacrifices of goat and calf blood, ________. I used my own blood as the price to set you free once and for all.
Adapted from The Message paraphrase of Hebrews 9.12
Thank you for giving your lifeblood as the price of our freedom. Thank you. Thank you.
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Tuesday
SYNC Card 31
The Mercy Declaration
I see myself in Christ as a mercy agent.
I see this day as a day to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, and to live like it matters.
God’s Word
________, I was beaten so you could know peace. My wounds heal you.
Adapted from The Message paraphrase of Isaiah 53.5
Thank you for taking the beating we deserved. Thank you that your wounds heal us.
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Wednesday
SYNC Card 32
The Mercy Declaration
I see myself in Christ as a mercy agent.
I see this day as a day to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, and to live like it matters.
God’s Word
It's simple, ________. If you forgive other people when they sin against you, I will also forgive you.
If you don't, I won't.
Adapted from The Message paraphrase of Matthew 6.14-15
OK, Lord, since you say so, we will let go of all our grudges and grievances today, like you forgave us.
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Thursday
SYNC Card 33
The Mercy Declaration
I see myself in Christ as a mercy agent.
I see this day as a day to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, and to live like it matters.
God’s Word
Repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all nations including yours, ________.
Adapted from The Message paraphrase of Luke 24.47
Thank you that your forgiveness is for all people
of all nations. Help us get the word out today.
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Friday
SYNC Card 34
The Mercy Declaration
I see myself in Christ as a mercy agent.
I see this day as a day to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, and to live like it matters.
God’s Word
I redeem you from hell, ________. I save your life! I crown you with love and mercy, getting you dressed for paradise.
Adapted from The Message paraphrase of Psalm 103.3-4
Thank you for saving us and crowning us with so much love and mercy that we have some to share.
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Saturday
SYNC Card 35
The Mercy Declaration
I see myself in Christ as a mercy agent.
I see this day as a day to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, and to live like it matters.
God’s Word
For even if the mountains walk away and the hills fall to pieces, my love and mercy won’t walk away from you, _______. My commitment stands.
Adapted from The Message paraphrase of Isaiah 54.10
Thank you for the spirit of power, love, and self-discipline. That is the spirit we will live in today.
FAQs on personal use of Jubilee Cards
Why do these Jubilee Cards work?
The verses, declarations, and prayers on the Jubilee Cards SYNC us with Christ and his sacrifice so that we can live as agents of his mercy. They clue us in to God's strategy to make his mercy work for the good of the whole world, and they sign us up to become part of his strategy during the Grace Period.
Jesus Christ is the center of God's mercy strategy. We are living in a Grace Period because of his merciful sacrifice, which brought heaven's mercy to earth. If we see ourselves in Christ, we see ourselves as linked to this strategy, which from a human point of view seems sure to fail.
Human thinking wants to make people pay for the wrong they do, except maybe for some small things we decide to kindly overlook. Many voices say, "They deserve to pay for the serious wrongs. Give them the penalty they deserve. Stand up for yourself. Teach them a lesson. If you forgive them, they will do it to you again next time."
But God is moving to a different rhythm, the Mercy Rhythm, even when the deed is as unspeakable as mocking, whipping, and executing his Son Jesus, and even before the evildoers realize they need forgiveness. Jesus prayed from the cross, "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they are doing." (Luke 23.24)
Jesus was not giving them permission to beat and crucify him again, and he certainly was not saying it was just a small mistake he was willing to overlook. No! He was creating an opportunity for them to realize what they had done and to renounce it.
And that is where we come in as mercy agents. We are the early adopters of the change God wants the whole world to make. We are the people who have renounced all opposition to God's strategy to change the world through Jesus and his sacrifice. We welcome the mercy and the forgiveness.
We let mercy sweep over us and make new people out of us, forgiven people, people who are not covering things up and not living in shame about them any more. We are people who have discovered that God's mercy deals with all those things once and for all. We never have to go back to those old ways.
We get to move on in Christ. We take on a share in his mission, spreading his mercy to other people who don't get it yet. The world needs the message of Christ's merciful sacrifice, and we are the agents who bring it and demonstrate how it changed us inside.
The cards remind us of the final Day of Atonement, that day when Jesus presented his blood to God the Father in heaven. We don't have to do anything else or earn anything else. We only accept his sacrifice and let the thought of it change us inside and out. Without his mercy, we would still have the death sentence hanging over us just like it hangs over the whole human race. But each time we read a Jubilee card, it reminds us of our pardon. With that on our minds, how can we refuse to forgive anyone for anything?
Isn't it dangerous to add any words of our own into a Scripture verse?