Day 5 - Week 16 - Hebrews 4:16 - "Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us at the proper time."

Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us at the proper time.

We've established the who, what, and where...tonight the "why"?

Again, quoting from Robert J Morgan, "Mercy is God's attitude of forgiveness in not giving us what we do deserve.  Grace is His attitude of blessing and benevolence in giving us what we do not deserve."

Isn't it true that everything we ask of God falls into one of these two categories? 

We come to Him to ask for His mercy over our lives when we know we have messed things up once again...to ask Him to forgive us, even though there is nothing about us that merits forgiveness.  But we know, both because we've been told and because we've previously experienced it, that, 

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."  1 John 1:9

We come to our Father and seek His mercy.  His promised mercy to us only because of Jesus our Savior.  Without Jesus atonement, we would cower in God's presence because of our sinfulness rather than being able to approach it with boldness and seek His mercy.  Our sinfulness deserves God's wrath - His mercy withholds that wrath and in its place we find mercy.

OR.....

We come to our Father asking for His grace; His grace to give us what we certainly do not deserve...His blessing over our lives.  We ask for His blessing over us, over our children, our grandchildren, our country.  We ask God to protect us, to strengthen us, to heal us.  We ask Him to lead us, to suppress wickedness, to bring our dry country rain.

We do not deserve the ability to ask anything of God...yet because of His grace, we can come to Him and present all of our requests and, in fact, He desires us to do so.  And the most important aspect of His grace....our salvation.  Again, it is only because of Jesus' sacrifice that we can come to our Father as His children and ask for His undeserved blessing over our earthly lives and to attain the ultimate blessing of eternal life with Him.

I am again humbled to think that I have been given such a truly awesome ability...to present my requests for both mercy and grace at the heavenly throne of God Almighty.  He is truly a loving Father to His children.