A Confident Approach

You may have read my earlier devotion about my grandson and his rock throwing, but if not I’ll just say this, that boy loves to pick up rocks and throw them into the pond. I think he would pass up a cookie to be able to stay outside to continue throwing his rocks! A recent afternoon found us once again at the pond’s edge with a little pile of rocks. After already replenishing this pile a few times, when Bryson next indicated he needed to go in search of more rocks, my response was, “Nope, not now”. Boom! It hit me immediately…my Heavenly Father never tells me that!

Through Jesus Christ we have total access to the very throne room of God. He never turns His children away. Look at Jeremiah 29:12-13, “When you call me and come and pray to me, I will listen to you. When you search for me, yes, search for me with all your heart, you will find me.” (CEB) There are no come back later(s) from Him. In fact, He desires that we come to Him in prayer and lay bare all of our burdens before His feet. (1 Peter 5:7) Sometimes, I have felt that surely I’d dug a trench in front of the throne, yet God continued to meet me there.

God wants us to come to Him in confidence and accordance to His will. We find this truth in 1 John 5:14, “This is the confidence that we have in our relationship with God: If we ask for anything in agreement with his will, he listens to us.” (CEB) In addition, Hebrews 4:16 speaks of this confidence as well: “Finally, let’s draw near to the throne of favor with confidence so that we can receive mercy and find grace when we need help.” (CEB) Actually, the word confidence is mentioned 168 times in the Bible and there are about 25 verses that talk about confidence in God.

Webster’s dictionary has several definitions for the word confidence, for this purpose I picked out these two: (1) the quality or state of being certain and (2) a relation of trust or intimacy. According to the scriptures we’ve read we should approach God in prayer in a state of being certain; of who He is and that He will hear us. The second definition makes it all click for me as we must first have that trusting and intimate relationship.

Don’t be afraid to approach God. Instead, approach Him with confidence, knowing that even though we cannot do this in our own strength, we can do it through Jesus, our great High Priest.

The perfect verse for closing this devotion was penned by John Newton:

Approach, my soul, the mercy seat, Where Jesus answers prayer; There humbly fall before his feet, For none can perish there.