Coming Close to God.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

This powerful hippo was inches away from my child. If I didn’t know this glass was strong, I would have reason to panic. But since this power was contained safely behind its enclosure, my daughter could get close enough to study and wonder at this hippo.

God is beyond wonderful. He is life to us, but He is also holy, holy, holy! Everything good. No sin. He cannot tolerate even a smidge of it! Like wood in a fire, anything unclean is incinerated in His presence. Nothing but love and goodness can be close to Him.

That’s quite a problem for us, isn’t it? No one, if they are honest, would deny that they aren’t perfect. It’s harder to accept that our sin is actually so bad it causes death. It is. And it does. Just look at our world. And nothing we do can be good enough to cover it. We can’t get close to God.

But GOD . . .

He loves us tremendously. He created us to be close to Him, to need Him and love Him, to wonder at Him and worship Him. So what did He do to protect us? He contained the power of His Holiness in Christ. Like the glass in this enclosure, Christ put Himself between God and us. He absorbed His powerful wrath on the cross. Now we are not only free to come close and observe Him, He makes His Home in us and brings us into Himself! We are free to live in Him, present our needs to Him, to wonder at Him, love and worship Him. What Love!

 ^“Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body,  and since we have a great priest over the house of God,  let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”
Hebrews 10:19-22 New International Version

Copyright photo and text Jennifer Brukiewa