With Confidence!

A friend of mine is blogging, I want to take a look at a Scripture passage she used. 

(Hebrews 4:15-16) "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 was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."

In my Woman's Devotional Bible there is some commentary on this passage. 
"Jesus as our high priest, offered the ultimate sacrifice of his own body so that no other sin offering will ever be required.  When he hung on the cross, the curtain preventing access to the Most Holy Place ripped in two (see Matthew 27:51).  Now everyone has access to the mercy seat.  Our great high priest has opened the way for everyone to confidently enter the throne room of God."

I have struggled ( and still struggle) with lack of confidence, doubt, and fear.  It gives me great joy to know that God wants me, urges me, to come to Him WITH CONFIDENCE!

This is also stated in 2 Corinthians 5:21, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Maybe this concept is just too simple for some folks.  I feel there is much debate over this, that we must add something to our grace.  Jesus +.  Jesus + "I go to church" Jesus + "I will help the poor" Jesus + "I am going to get better at respecting, showing love, doing good" Jesus + "other good human beings"

NO! Acts 4:12 says "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

I used to feel that if I just tried hard enough, then I could get good enough, I could earn light, life, goodness. Or maybe if I just do what some other good people do, and look to them to give me answers. That did not work.  I only felt like I was falling further, and further in despair and failure.

 I love what Paul says, 2 Corinthians 6:2 "I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation."

It is now!  And once I realized that, everything fell into place.  I have been having the image of a puzzle this week.  I felt, my whole life I was gathering pieces to a puzzle, but they never seeming to quite fit together right.  Jesus came along and put it together for me! But, I have the image in my mind and on my heart, that there is one piece (a corner piece) still not in place because that will be what I recieve when I go home.  When my work here on earth is done, and the job God set before me is done according to His will.  And everyday God gives me here, I am getting a clearer and clearer picture of what is on that puzzle.  How my life fits into the bigger picture God is painting.