Overflowing Mercies: 100 Meditations on the Tender Heart of God
Ebook
What if your life was immersed in mercy?
In a culture that is short on compassion, maybe that’s difficult to imagine. There’s not nearly enough patience or tenderness in the world. Maybe you’re in the middle of a hard season and feel disheartened. Or you’re struggling to show mercy and kindness to the people in your life.
In this NOISY world, God’s heart beats hard with love and mercy. But how can God share His heart with us when He doesn’t have our attention?
Best-selling author and Bible teacher Craig Allen Cooper opens readers to the beautiful, merciful heart of our triune God. In this 100-day devotional, you will be comforted as you meditate on God’s character. You will find courage in His promises to you. And as you soak deeply in God’s love and compassion, you will become better equipped to love and bless the family, friends, and people God has placed in your life.
Enter into the soul-heartening journey of God’s Overflowing Mercies.
“As a dad, I am starving for creative ways to gather my family around Scripture. Overflowing Mercies is an absolute answer to a frustrated prayer. The heart of God beats HARD in these pages. The reflections really get everybody chiming in, and the prayers might be my favorite part. We feel like we’re praying with the Coopers! Craig, thank you for placing our hands in the hands of Jesus with your words. ‘How you write like that?’”
—WALKER AND LANEY HAYES, Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter; USA Today bestselling author; and his wife, Laney, mother of 7 (6 on earth, 1 in heaven)
“The gift of mercy is a rare jewel in a world that keeps such stringent score. This book is a gentle invitation to come and receive that gift and be embraced as you are. It’s grace and mercy that changes us, and the words of our friend Craig will pour grace over your soul as you journey through these pages.”
—MATT AND SARAH HAMMITT, Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter; 3x Dove Award recipient; author/speaker; and his wife, Sarah, mother of 4
“When I invited Craig to speak at a weekend service in our church, I had no idea how much I would be encouraged. Too often, my story is defined by measuring up and my worth determined by my productivity. It’s exhausting and impossible to maintain. But Craig shared a different story. It was a story of good news that God loves us right where we are, that we are valued and desired, and that God is for us. Learning to live in this truth is absolute freedom. This is Craig’s heart message. In Overflowing Mercies, we are invited to walk with Craig, to slow down for a few minutes each day and saturate ourselves in the Scriptures and in prayer that we may experience the freedom and rest God offers as we are continually conformed to the image of Jesus.”
—DON DODGE, Lead Pastor of Avalon Church, Orlando, FL
“I have known Craig as a speaker, writer, and friend, and he consistently demonstrates authentic joy rooted in his daily walk with the Lord. Overflowing Mercies offers a meaningful experience of God’s heart with simple but beautiful language that is approachable for all. Each meditation invites intimacy with the Lord that is profound and personal, whether in an individual, family, or small group setting. As part of an organization that equips men to know God deeper, I am excited to recommend this as a practical resource to guide them on their journey!”
—JUSTIN WATKINS, Chief Generosity Mentor at Men of Iron
“I can vividly remember hearing Craig share his testimony at church after he had committed his life to Jesus as a college freshman in 1995. Since then, we have served as pastors together in three different churches—I can faithfully attest that Overflowing Mercies is the overflow of the deep devotional life of a man who walks closely with the Lord throughout all the highs and lows of life. There are treasures in this book for all who read it. Here is both an example and a means of grace to help you grow in your relationship with the Lord!”
—HOWARD VARNEDOE, Lead Pastor of Hope Community Church, Columbia/Spring Hill, TN
“We discovered Craig and Walker’s book Glad You’re Here and resonated so deeply with its message that, when we got married, we gave the book to everyone who came to our wedding. And then we invited Craig to share this message with our church. We aspire to the same way of living that Craig does—he is such a gifted encourager of people. So, when he wrote this devotional book, we knew it would be written by someone coming from a deep place of love for both God and people. And that is exactly what it is. Make it a daily habit for 100 days and you will see God use it to change both your heart and your life!”
—JEREL AND LIZ LAW, Lead Pastor of Love Lake Norman and fiction author; and his wife, Liz, author and advocate for the marginalized
- Title: Overflowing Mercies: 100 Meditations on the Tender Heart of God
- Author: Craig A. Cooper
- Publisher: Moody Publishers
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780802472793, 9780802432698, 0802432697, 0802472796
- Resource ID: LLS:9780802472793
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-09-02T07:41:37Z
Overflowing Mercies
100 Meditations on the Tender Heart of God
By Craig Allen Cooper
Moody Publishers
Copyright © 2024 Craig Allen Cooper
All rights reserved.
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8024-3269-8
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8024-7279-3
Excerpt—A Note to the Reader
God’s love for you is mesmerizing. It is more astonishing than all the wonders of the world and grandeur of the galaxies combined. Anything beautiful or magnificent in creation that has ever stolen your breath away is but a whisper of God’s glory that is meant to disclose His ardent and tender affection for you.
You are relentlessly on the mind of God, and you are incessantly in the heart of God. If you could fathom in some small way how warmly God truly feels about you, the faintest grasp of His immeasurable affection would reduce you to tearful wonder and heartfelt gratitude. It would also make an extraordinary impact on the way you live your life and the way you love those within your relational spheres.
This is the aim of Overflowing Mercies: to unveil the tender heart of God for you. This work is written as a devotional book, intended to aid the reader in communion with God. For some, this will be an introduction to scriptural meditation. (If communion with God is new to you, my prayer is that as you read the entries in this book, they would be like kindling for your soul, sparking a love for God and His Word that will draw you into the Bible itself in a transformative way that you have never experienced before.)
For others who may be accustomed to reading devotional books, my goal has been to provide you with an additional resource that will serve as a means of comfort, strength, and encouragement to you, with its 100 daily entries on God’s tender mercy. Who doesn’t need more comfort? Who couldn’t use more strength? Do you know anyone too encouraged? I sure don’t.
Here are three suggested uses for Overflowing Mercies:
Personal Devotions—This book is intended to be read alongside the Bible. My hope is that every entry whets your appetite for more of Scripture. Each entry includes scriptural references, and I invite you to look them up, study them in depth, and see for yourself the treasures in God’s Word.
Family/Dinner Table Devotions—For years, our family has benefited from devotional helps for dinner table discussions. After a meal, we may read an entry of a devotional book and ask a question or two to spark spiritual conversations. I am grateful for the resources that have served our family in this way, and I pray that Overflowing Mercies will be of similar help to other families. I’ve included at least one question for reflection after each entry to help guide these types of discussions.
Small Group Encouragement—Any of these meditations can be read at the beginning of a small group meeting to quickly direct the group’s attention to God’s heart for us in Jesus.
However you choose to use this book, my prayer is “that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17–19).