Last night while I was at a worship night at my church, I felt compelled to jot down some thoughts. I immediately knew I wanted to share those thoughts on my blog. At first I thought the two things I had were unrelated, but as I thought about it, the two things fit together.

Here's the first thing I wrote (the quote is a song lyric that we sang that jumped out at me):
"Every crown no longer on display" We don't need to shine up our trophies and show off our accomplishments to impress God. We can enter into His presence just as we are because Jesus shed His blood for us. Because of God's great grace, we can enter the very throne room of heaven and praise the God who saved us.
Romans 3:22-25
(We're going through Romans in my Bible study and last week we were on chapter 3, so I knew how perfectly those verses backed up my thoughts.)

The second thing I wrote:
Sometimes I feel like Esther. She was chosen by the king, she had gained his favor, but she still feared for her life when she came before the king uninvited. Despite knowing I am God's chosen and that He loves me, I am still sometimes afraid to enter into His presence.

It can be really easy to think that we have to approach God the same way we approach everyone around us: look our best, act our best, prove we're important. But God doesn't work like that. He knows our darkest, dirtiest secrets, and He decided that He still loved us enough to send His son to die so we could be redeemed. And when we screw up again, which we will, because we're human, God loves it when we run back to Him instead of hiding from Him.