Assured By Greg GilbertSample

Assurance of Access

If you are God’s child, you have access to your Father and can be fully confident in this. The following illustration will help strengthen this important point. I belong to a gym and sometimes my teenage son, who is not a member, likes to come with me and work out. When we walk up to the desk, I’m the one who shows my gym card, and when I do, I explain that my son is with me. The attendant nods and waves us through. Once that’s done, my son is free to do anything I’m free to do in the gym. Whatever privileges I have, he shares because he’s with me. 

I have access to the gym by right of a paid membership; he has access to it, not at all by right, but by virtue of his relationship with me. You see? My son’s right to be present in the gym and take advantage of its resources is no less real or valid than mine. It’s just based on a different foundation—not his own paid membership but his father’s. 

Hebrews 10 is all about having access to the presence of God because Christ gives us this right by faith. We place our faith in Christ and receive the confidence to enter into God’s presence, without fear that we don’t belong—but “in full assurance of faith.” By participating, we demonstrate our confidence to receive this right to belong in God’s presence. 

Please don’t rush through this truth. Jesus got you here, and it is Jesus that keeps you in this standing. You have nothing to prove, and this cuts hard against what is natural to our thinking. But that is actually the point! The work of Christ on our behalf is our source of assurance. The fact is, our minds and hearts will always look for a way to find self-assurance. We desperately want to justify our presence before God’s throne—but God’s Word says NO. 

We stand in God’s presence with confidence and assurance not because we’ve paid our own dues or proved our own mettle. We stand with confidence solely because of what Jesus did for us. Our confidence that we belong in the presence of God is not self-confidence; it’s Christ-confidence.

Christ’s shedding His blood paid the entire debt our sins enslaved us to. By faith, we receive access to the Father because of Christ’s submission to the Cross. Allow the Holy Spirit to speak this truth over your mind and settle your heart.