Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to another morning with the Master's Red Devote

ourselves to the Lord daily with you. Good morning, you guys. Good morning, indeed. We

are back in a new morning Mercy's devotional today, and just a reminder, these devotional

can be a bit wordy, so definitely either pause or rewind if you need to, but they are incredibly

powerful and that's why we keep reading them. I'm going to go ahead and jump in. Why give way

to fear when in Christ it is impossible for you to ever be alone because you are now the temple

in which God dwells. It is far more than a too good to be true story. It is so amazing that it

defies all normal human logic and intuition. It is the spiritual miracle of miracles that becomes

the normal identity of all of God's children bought by grace. It is amazing enough that we are

forgiven and accepted by God by grace and by grace alone. There is nothing natural about this.

We naturally think that we have to work our way into God's favor and earn our way into God's

presence, but the biblical story is anything but natural. It is the story of rebels who not only

don't desire a relationship with God, but who could not possibly earn it even if they did desire

a relationship with God. This is a story of divine intervention, of divine substitution, of divine

sacrifice and of divine grace. It is a story of God sending His Son to live as we were meant to live

to die of death that each of us deserves to satisfy God's righteous requirement and

placate His anger and to rise out of the grave conquering sin and death. It is a story of incredible

patience, tenderness, compassion, love, mercy and grace. Forgiveness is granted, acceptance is

secured, and righteousness is given to those who could not have merited them on their own.

But as amazing as the grace of forgiveness and the acceptance of God are, there is still more

amazing grace to this story. God knew that the dilemma of our sin was such a deep personal moral

disaster that it was not enough to forgive us. Forgiveness should never be minimized, but God

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