There is a kind of love that steadies you just by knowing it’s there. Psalm 103:13 pulls back the curtain on that kind of love, describing the Lord’s tenderness toward those who stand in awe of Him. It is not cold, distant concern, but the warm, steady care of a Father who really sees His children—our weakness, our failures, our fears—and moves toward us, not away from us. Today is an invitation to let that truth rewrite the way you see God, and the way you see yourself before Him.

Seeing God’s Face, Not a Frown

Many of us secretly picture God as mostly disappointed with us—arms crossed, waiting for us to finally “get it together.” But Psalm 103:13 gives a different picture: “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him”. The heart of God toward His people is not cold scrutiny but deep, active compassion. He is not indifferent to your battle with sin, your exhaustion, your confusion; He feels for you in it and leans in with mercy. When you come to Him in prayer, you are not walking into a courtroom first—you are walking into a Father’s house.

Jesus showed this in the story of the prodigal son. The father sees his son “a long way off” and runs toward him, embracing him before the son can finish his confession. That’s what compassion looks like in motion. Hebrews 4 says we have a High Priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses and invites us to “approach the throne of grace with confidence.” A compassionate Father and a sympathetic Savior—this is who receives you today, not a harsh taskmaster waiting to pounce on your failures.

Those Who Fear Him: Awe That Draws Us Close

The promise of Psalm 103:13 is specifically for “those who fear Him.” That phrase doesn’t mean cowering terror; it means a trembling awe that takes God seriously—His holiness, His authority, His worth. Proverbs 9:10 says that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, because you only start to live rightly when you realize God is God and you are not. To fear Him is to bow your heart, to stop arguing with His Word, to surrender your right to define good and evil for yourself.

But this fear does not push you away; it actually pulls you closer. Malachi 3 speaks of those who feared the LORD and spoke with one another; the Lord listened, wrote their names in His book, and called them His treasured possession. Holy fear and tender nearness live together. When you repent quickly, obey even when it’s costly, and refuse to treat God lightly, you are stepping into that circle of those who “fear Him”—and right there, the Father’s compassion becomes a lived reality, not just a verse on a page.

Living Like Loved Children

If God really deals with you as a compassionate Father, you don’t have to live like a spiritual orphan anymore—scrambling for approval, terrified of messing up, always comparing yourself to others. Romans 8 says you have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom you cry, “Abba, Father,” and that the Spirit Himself testifies that you are God’s child. Loved children can confess sin honestly, because they know the door of the Father’s house never slams in their face. They can get back up after failure, not making light of sin, but trusting that “He knows our frame” and remembers how fragile we are.

And this compassion is not just something to receive; it is something to reflect. Ephesians 5 calls us to be imitators of God as beloved children, and to walk in love as Christ loved us. Colossians 3 tells us to put on hearts of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with and forgiving one another. In other words, the way God treats you is meant to become the way you treat others. As you soak in the Father’s tender mercy, let it change how you look at the weak, the annoying, the failing, the fearful. Loved children learn to love like their Father.

Father, thank You for Your deep compassion toward me. Today, teach me to fear You rightly, to trust Your Father-heart, and to show Your same mercy to those around me.

It was a saying of George Mueller that faith grows with use. If we would have great faith we must begin to use the little faith we already have. Put it to work by reverent and faithful praying, and it will grow and become stronger day by day. Dare today to trust God for something small and ordinary and next week or next year you may be able to trust Him for answers bordering on the miraculous. Everyone has some faith, said Mueller; the difference among us is one of degree only, and the man of small faith may be simply the one who has not dared to exercise the little faith he has. According to the Bible, we have because we ask, or we have not because we ask not. It does not take much wisdom to discover our next move. Is it not to pray, and pray again and again till the answer comes? God waits to be invited to display His power in behalf of His people. The world situation is such that nothing less than God can straighten it out. Let us not fail the world and disappoint God by failing to pray.

Repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. - Acts 20:21

Very near the close of his missionary career the Apostle Paul summed up his preaching as being all directed to two points, " Repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." These two, repentance and faith, ought never to be separated in thought, as they are inseparable in fact. Genuine repentance is impossible without faith; true faith cannot exist without repentance.

And yet the two are separated very often, in this day especially, even by earnest Christian teachers who have a great deal to say about faith, and not nearly enough in proportion about repentance; and the effect is to obscure the very idea of faith, and not seldom to preach, " Peace! peace! where there is no peace." A Gospel which is always talking about faith, and scarcely ever talking about repentance, is denuded indeed of some of its most unwelcome characteristics, but is also deprived of most of its power, and it may very easily become an ally of all righteousness and an indulgence to sin.

Some of the most formidable objections to the Christian doctrine of forgiveness - viz., that it is immoral in its substance - arise chiefly from forgetting that "repentance" towards "God" is as real a condition of salvation as is "faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." We have here the Apostle’s deliverance about one of these twin thoughts. We have three stages - the root, the stem, the fruit; sorrow, repentance, salvation. But there is a right and a wrong kind of sorrow for sin. The right kind breeds repentance, and thence reaches salvation; the wrong kind breeds nothing, and so ends in death. Look at this ladder, which the Apostle sets up "from the horrible pit and the miry clay" of evil, up to the sunny heights of salvation, and trace its stages; not forgetting that it is not a complete statement of the case, and needs to be supplemented, in the spirit of the words already quoted, by the other part of the inseparable whole, "faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ."

It would be an interesting study to examine the two letters of the Apostle Peter, in order to construct from them a picture of what he became, and to contrast it with his own earlier self, when full of self-confidence, rashness, and instability. It took a lifetime for Simon, the son of Jonas, to grow into Peter; but it was done. And the very faults of the character became strength. What he had proved possible in his own case he commands and commends to us; and from the height to which he has reached he looks upwards to the infinite ascent which he knows he will attain when he puts off this tabernacle, and then downwards to his brethren, bidding them, too, climb and aspire. His last word is like that of the great Roman Catholic apostle to the East Indies: "Forward!" He is like some trumpeter on the battlefield who spends his last breath in sounding an advance. Immortal hope animates his dying injunction: " Grow! grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour."