That we may receive grace and mercy. Hebrews 4:16
Pray. Pray earnestly and pray often.
Prayer represents the sacred conversation between you and your Heavenly Father made possible because God sent His Son, who has become our High Priest and has made a way for us into God’s presence. So, pray. Pray like you believe these truths, for they indeed represent the theology behind our prayers.
In keeping with this theme, did you know that our personal prayer life not only reveals what we believe about Jesus and about God, but our prayer life can demonstrate what we believe about man (and more significantly about our needs as mankind)? The Bible instructs in Hebrews 4:16 that because of what Jesus has accomplished, we can come into God’s presence to receive mercy and find grace in our time of need.
God’s throne is called “the throne of grace.” The term “throne” represents a place of power and rule. God powerfully rules, and through His reign demonstrates His gracious love. At His throne, grace and mercy are found in abundance. And, this represents our invitation to pray. This is our opportunity to come before God with all our needs, those seemingly overwhelming needs, and even those that are categorized as daily needs. We are to bring our needs before our God in the name of Christ. And, why? Because we stand in need of His gracious love. Mankind is empty in and of Himself – desperately in need of grace and mercy. But there at God’s throne, in His presence, we will find all the grace and mercy our needful status requires. We come through Jesus our High Priest to a God who has given us adoption into His family. And, with these facts as the foundation of our confidence, we bring our needs before God. We cannot be sure how God will answer. But we know grace and mercy await our requests. We cannot be certain of fulling understanding God’s responses to our needs and our requests, but His mercy and grace flows ever abundant for the one who comes to Him by faith in Christ.
This represents your life of prayer: bringing petitions and supplications before God. And as you come into God’s presence with your needs, you are not to demand answers nor attempt to offer prayers bent on the inclinations of the carnal man. You are invited to bring your needs, all of them, before your Heavenly father and to seek His grace and mercy. You should not expect that God will always answer exactly as you have asked, but you can always expect to be met with grace and mercy.
How can we be sure of God’s grace and mercy? Jesus, our High Priest, sympathizes with our every need and weakness:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet He did not sin. (Hebrews 4:15)
Jesus sympathizes with our weaknesses. He endured humanity, though perfectly God in the flesh. And although struggles mounted against Him on every side, both internally and externally, He did not sin. He had not even the remotest thought that would contradict God’s Holiness and His own incarnation. He lived on this earth perfectly. And He knows our struggles and our weaknesses. For, He overcame them in His perfection. And now He brings to us grace and mercy in our time of weaknesses and in our needs.
A king visited a prison and told the jailer that he wished to give one person at least his liberty. So, he went around to all the cells and asked each prisoner why he was in jail. They all asserted their innocence of crime and blamed others for their misfortunes. Finally, he came to a poor down-cast fellow who said “I am guilty of the crime for which I was convicted and I am getting my just desserts.” “That is the man” said the king “I wish to liberate. He can be trusted with His liberty.” All the rest were willing to receive a favor from the king, but only this one was in an attitude of mind to receive his mercy. “A sinner saved by grace” begins the Christian experience, and it is the foundation on which everything else is built. (Pastor A. C. Dixon, 1908).[1]
Our greatest need is for grace and mercy. And, when we understand this, our prayers will forever be transformed. We will no longer approach God timidly, nor out of presumption. We will approach Him with confidence that of all the needs that are manifested in our lives, He has promised to meet us at our greatest need: the need for grace and mercy. And this He has met in Christ. Upon His grace and mercy are all other needs are met.
So today, bring your needs to Him. And expect that He will meet your requests with His grace and mercy. And as you receive the continued flow of grace and mercy, be amazed at how He will indeed respond to and answer your prayers according to His heart for you.
Blessings.
[1] A. C. Dixon, https://www.moodymedia.org/articles/throne-grace.
