Psalm 116:5 pulls us close to the heart of God: He doesn’t just have power; He has character. The psalmist is looking back on real trouble and realizing that the Lord’s response wasn’t cold distance—it was gracious help, righteous steadiness, and compassionate care.

Grace That Meets You First

Grace means God is not waiting for you to pull yourself together before He leans in. He moves toward the desperate, the weary, and the guilty with welcome. “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). When you’re out of words, grace gives you a place to stand and a Person to run to.

And grace doesn’t just start the relationship—it carries it. You may feel like your weakness disqualifies you, but God says otherwise: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Today, don’t negotiate with God as if you need to earn His attention. Ask, receive, and then walk forward like grace is real—because it is.

Righteousness You Can Trust

Psalm 116:5 doesn’t only call God gracious; it calls Him righteous. That means His kindness is never flimsy or unpredictable—His help is anchored in what is right. He will never “fix” your life by ignoring sin, and He will never condemn you after providing a Savior. The cross is where His righteousness and mercy meet without compromise: “But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Because He is righteous, you can tell Him the truth. Confession isn’t walking into a courtroom with a shaky judge; it’s stepping into the light with a faithful Father. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Let His righteousness calm your fear: He will do what is right—and what is right includes forgiving all who come through Christ.

Compassion That Stays Close

God’s compassion is not sentimental; it is personal. Psalm 116:5 says, “The LORD is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion.” He is “full” of it—never running low, never distracted, never too busy to notice you. “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him” (Psalm 103:13). He deals with you as a loved child, not an inconvenience.

And compassion shows up new every morning, even when yesterday was messy. “Because of the LORD’s loving devotion we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!” (Lamentations 3:22–23). So bring Him what hurts, bring Him what’s heavy, bring Him what you’ve been hiding—and then let His compassion shape how you treat others today.

Lord, thank You that You are gracious, righteous, and full of compassion. Help me come to You honestly, receive Your mercy, and live today as a witness of Your kindness to others. Amen.

ONCE MARY AND JOSEPH, with a number of friends and relatives, were traveling back home from Jerusalem and, supposing the young Jesus to be in the company, went a whole day's journey before discovering that He had been left behind.

Their fault was that they assumed that what they wanted to believe was so in fact. They took too much for granted. A simple check at the start of the journey would have saved them a harrowing experience of fear and uncertainty and two days' unnecessary travel.

Theirs was a pardonable fault and one that we ourselves are in great danger of committing. The whole company of evangelicals is traveling home supposing things, some of which may not be true. We had better check before we go any further. Our failure to do so could have more serious consequences than those suffered by Mary and Joseph. It could lead straight to tragedy.

There is danger that we take Christ for granted. We suppose that because we hold New Testament beliefs we are therefore New Testament Christians; but it does not follow. The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still.

We may, for instance, assume that salvation is possible without repentance. Pardon without penitence is a delusion which simple honesty requires that we expose for what it is. To be forgiven, a sin must be forsaken. This accords with the Scriptures, with common logic and with the experience of the saints of all ages.

We are also in danger of assuming the value of religion without righteousness. Through the various media of public communication we are being pressured into believing that religion 'is little more than a beautiful thing capable of bringing courage and peace of mind to a troubled world. Let us resist this effort at brainwashing. The purpose of Christ's redeeming work was to make it possible for bad men to become gooddeeply, radically and finally. God translates men out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love. To believe that such translated men must still dwell in darkness is a reflection on the blood of Christ and the wisdom of God.

In spite of all that James said to the contrary, we are still likely to take for granted that faith without works does somehow have a mystic value after all. But faith worketh by love, said Paul, and where the works of love are absent we can only conclude that faith is absent also. Faith in faith has displaced faith in God in too many places.

A whole new generation of Christians has come up believing that it is possible to accept Christ without forsaking the world. But what saith the Holy Ghost? Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God (James 4:4), and If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15) . This requires no comment, only obedience.

We may also erroneously assume that we can experience justification without transformation. Justification and regeneration are not the same; they may be thought apart in theology but they can never be experienced apart in fact. When God declares a man righteous He instantly sets about to make him righteous. Our error today is that we do not expect a converted man to be a transformed man, and as a result of this error our churches are full of substandard Christians. A revival is among other things a return to the belief that real faith invariably produces holiness of heart and righteousness of life.

Again, we may go astray by assuming that we can do spiritual work without spiritual power. I have heard the notion seriously advanced that whereas once to win men to Christ it was necessary to have a gift from the Holy Spirit, now religious movies make it possible for anyone to win souls, without such spiritual anointing! Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. Surely such a notion is madness, but until now I have not heard it challenged among the evangelicals.

David Brainerd once compared a man without the power of the Spirit trying to do spiritual work to a workman without fingers attempting to do manual labor. The figure is striking but it does not overstate the facts. The Holy Spirit is not a luxury meant to make deluxe Christians, as an illuminated frontispiece and a leather binding make a deluxe book. The Spirit is an imperative necessity. Only the Eternal Spirit can do eternal deeds.

Without exhausting the list of things wrongly taken for granted I would mention one more: Millions take for granted that it is possible to live for Christ without first having died with Christ. This is a serious error and we dare not leave it unchallenged.

The victorious Christian has known two lives. The first was his life in Adam which was motivated by the carnal mind and can never please God in any way. It can never be converted; it can only die (Romans 8:5-8).

The second life of the Christian is his new life in Christ (Romans 6:114). To live a Christian life with the life of Adam is wholly impossible. Yet multitudes take for granted that it can be done and go on year after year in defeat. And worst of all they accept this half-dead condition as normal.

For our own soul's sake, let's not take too much for granted.

Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me, - Revelation 3:20.

We have here the exalted Christ asking to be let in to a man’s heart. The latter words of the verse suggest the image of a banqueting-hall. The chamber to which Christ desires entrance is full of feaster’s. There is room for everybody else there but Him. Music and dancing and lights and good cheer and laughter fill the house, and He stands without. There is no room for Him, as there was not at His birth.

Now the plain, sad truth which that sets forth is this, that we are more willing to let anybody and anything come into our thoughts, and find lodgement in our affections, than we are to let Jesus Christ come in. Is it so, or is it not? The doors that swing wide for vanities and selfishness, lust and passions, whims and fancies, and favourite pursuits, are barred and bolted in His face. We welcome to the chief seats in our hearts His and our worst enemies. They flock in; He stands without, like some exiled and dethroned monarch, who, coming back to his own land and his own palace, stands amongst the ragged losels on the pavement, and sees the upstarts and the rebels passing into the lighted halls; all His own, where He may not enter. Is it so, or is it not?

The reality of Christ’s knocking is represented not only as being the touch of an importunate hand, but is accompanied also with the beseeching of a voice. That is not a pretty metaphor only. Jesus Christ is living and working to-day; He is at your side, present though unseen, working upon you though you know it not; trying to draw you to Himself; pleading with you year by year and moment by moment. It is one of the deepest facts of human existence, a barred heart, and a present Saviour suing for entrance.

And how does He sue? Does He not knock at your heart by that Book of which the very spirit in all its parts is the testimony to Him? Is He not knocking at your heart loud blows, by sorrows and gentle touches, waxen touches, soft and warm and sweet as a baby’s hand; by the mercies that come to you day by day? When Absalom would not go to Joab, Joab burned his corn, and then Absalom came to him. When a man will not come to Christ, sometimes He burns his corn, and then, sometimes, the man comes. And the further we go from Him, the louder the beseeching impressiveness of the knocks of His hand. Have you never found rising up in your soul a sudden conviction, with which you had nothing to do but to listen to it; telling you what you ought to do and to be? Have you not sometimes had flashing in upon you, like a sudden glare in the dark, the conviction, "I ought to be a Christian and to follow Jesus Christ"? Such voices -

"Our inward ear

Catches sometimes from afar.

Listen, ponder, hold them dear,

For of God- of God, they are."

Every conviction, every impression, every half inclination towards Him that has risen in your hearts, though you fought against it and smothered it, and did anything with it but obeyed it, has been His knocking there.