"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

 Approaching God   No matter how many religious things we do or feel, whether praying, generous giving or abstaining from our ideas of worldliness, we cannot find, in any of them, a qualification by which we can approach God. Religious activity provides no resting place on which to discover the smile of God.  If sin were a simple thing like a disease then perhaps religious observations might be helpful in mending the separating gulf between man and the Almighty. But sin is much worse than any disease; the unsaved sinner is not merely ‘sin-sick’, he is ‘sin-dead’ (Ephesians 2:1). Worse still, he is under the righteous condemnation of inflexible justice (John 3:18). God, the unchangeable judge has an unalterable hatred of sin and has warned about His coming wrath against the unsaved sinner and his sin (Matthew 23:33). Unbelieving self-righteous religious people make the awful mistake of trying to present their character to God as the basis of approaching Him. Approaching G

" Nothing is requisite in order to a participation of Christ and His benefits but a grant from God." -James Hervey