Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to another mornings with the masters who devote ourselves to the Lord daily with you.

We are picking back up with New Morning Mercies.

I'm just going to take it from here.

It says this, why give way to fear when in Christ 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

blood-bought children 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

until his presence. But the biblical story is anything but natural. It's 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. 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 the 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 granted, acceptance,

secured, and righteousness given to those who could not have merited it 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 just forgive us. That forgiveness

should never be minimized, but God knew that we needed even more. He knew that after our

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