Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault (Colossians 1:22 NLT).
Do you know what I see when I look in the mirror? I’ll be honest with you. I see a middle-aged woman who’s lived a hard life and who struggles with judgment, criticism, a rebellious tongue, jealousy, selfishness, eating too much and trust issues. Sometimes I wonder why God chose me to write Christian novels.
So when I came across this verse in Colossians the other day, it hit me like a slap in the face—a gentle, godly slap, that is, but one I needed badly. God spoke so clearly to my heart that day. He told me this is how He sees me. Holy, blameless, without a single fault.
It took a minute for it to sink in. But yes. That’s how He sees me—and how He sees you. Not because we are those things, but because Jesus is standing before us, and God sees us through the veil of His Son.
Jesus’s blood cloaks our sins and faults—erases them, in fact—so that when we come before God in prayer and approach the throne, we can do it boldly as Paul says in Hebrews 4:16:
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 (Hebrews 4:16 NIV).
Not cowering, not timidly, not guilt-ridden, but strolling boldly up to the Captain’s cabin like sons and daughters, princes and princesses (with all reverence, of course). Because when God Almighty looks down upon us, He sees us as perfect, and as His precious children.
How, then, can we not believe that He will hear and answer all our prayers?
So try and remember this the next time you enter the Captain’s cabin; and maybe, just maybe, you’ll ask for some pretty huge things. Because we serve a pretty huge and amazing God!
MaryLu Tyndall