COLOSSIANS 1:21-22.

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

TO PONDER

What a clear, unambiguous statement of our status as children of our Heavenly Father – being able to come into the presence of an awesome holy God, ourselves holy, blameless, and totally free of all imperfections. And we are able to do this because His Son, Jesus is there right beside us, confirming that He has fulfilled all requirements for us to achieve that holy, blameless and imperfection‑free state.

I must admit that I struggle to live out this reality in my daily life. For example, when I come to the end of each day and come to God to say goodnight and thank Him for His guidance through the day, I am regularly thinking over the day, looking for episodes in my life where I did good and can be proud of what I achieved as a child of God. It’s always nice, but unfortunately rare, that I had an exciting experience of my involvement with God during the day. I know that this focus is wrong, because it is about what I have done. The reality is that God has been active in my life through the whole day, achieving His purpose through everything I do or say, even when I am being selfish and self‑centred.

So when I come to God to say goodnight at the end of the day, I really come with nothing that I have achieved. My relationship with my Heavenly Father is wholly dependent on what Jesus has done, and anything I achieved during the day was because of Holy Spirit living in me and working out God’s purpose in me.

I would like to share a thought about our access to our Heavenly Family that come out of our Easter reflections. The temple which existed in Jerusalem during Jesus life here on earth was the place people went to be close to God. In the temple was the Most Holy Place (Holy of Holies in some bible translations) which represented God’s presence. It was separated from the rest of the temple by a curtain. It could only be entered once a year by the Jewish high priest. When Jesus died on the cross, this curtain was torn in two from top to bottom, thus enabling all people to have direct access to God through Jesus’s death and resurrection. Jesus is the new High Priest which provides us this access to the Heavenly Family.

It is interesting that the Jews in Israel would love to rebuild the temple on its original site, but God has allowed that this is not presently possible. God no longer wants to be confined to a temple, but be accessible to all people – through His Son, Jesus.

With such an accessible God, wouldn’t we want to get to know Him more intimately and learn how to live out His plans and purposes for us?

Prayer: Heavenly Family, thank You all again for all you are doing in growing me as a member of Your family. I want to be a fully committed member of this family and so I give myself to You to keep changing me to become more like my new brother, Jesus. Amen

Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping