2026-08-17 | 🚪 Afraid to Approach God? Jesus Opened the Most Holy Place

7-Step QT Notes

1. 🙏 Quiet Time

Pause.

Take a deep breath.

Ask God to help you see both his perfect holiness and the amazing grace that allows you to approach him through Jesus Christ.

2. 📅 August 17, 2026

Today’s passage reminds us:

God is perfectly holy, yet through the blood of Jesus Christ, he welcomes us into his presence as his beloved children.

3. ✝️ Ezekiel 41:1-26

Ezekiel follows the guide as he measures the nave, the Most Holy Place, the temple walls, three-story side chambers, courts, and the western building. Wood paneling, cherubim, and palm trees adorn the temple inside and out. Before the Holy Place stands a wooden altar, called “the table that is before the LORD.” Double doors and narrow windows complete the ordered sanctuary.

4. 📖 Key Verse

And he measured the length of the room, twenty cubits, and its breadth, twenty cubits, across the nave. And he said to me, “This is the Most Holy Place” (v. 4).

5. 📝 Reflection

Contrary to the general impression people who know me now may have, or even to the results of personality assessments such as the MBTI, I was a very mischievous child. When I was in elementary school, I once even jumped from the third floor while pretending to be Superman, who was popular at the time. Yet even I had a place I wanted to avoid at all costs: the principal’s office. Because I desperately wanted to avoid being called there, I seem to have observed certain boundaries even when my pranks became excessive.

For that reason, the Holy Place, and especially the Most Holy Place, was a place of fear for me. My Sunday school teacher explained that only the high priest could enter the Most Holy Place once a year and that anyone who entered carelessly, disregarding the way God had prescribed, would die. From that time on, I thought of the Most Holy Place as I thought of the principal’s office: a place I must never enter and would rather not even approach.

As time passed, however, I encountered Jesus Christ personally and began to believe the Word of God wholeheartedly. Only then did the Most Holy Place cease to be a place of fear for me. I came to understand the meaning of the curtain that separated the Most Holy Place in the Jerusalem temple being torn from top to bottom when Jesus died on the cross. God the Father is no longer someone we can meet only in a particular place called the Most Holy Place. Through Jesus Christ, we can approach God anytime and anywhere and call him “Abba, Father.” The Most Holy Place is no longer like the principal’s office from which I must run away in fear. It has become like the study of a loving father, a place I may enter with both love and reverence.

Verse 4 of today’s passage vividly reveals the holiness of God and proclaims that the tragedy described in the first half of Ezekiel, in which the temple was defiled and the glory of God departed, will now be healed. A dwelling place in which the holy God will once again reside among Israel is being carefully set apart and prepared without the slightest error. When God once again dwells among his people and reveals his holy name, not only the people of Israel but all nations will know that he is the LORD.

Dear believers, may we also come to know God more deeply through his Word today. May we realize what an extraordinary grace it is that we, though sinners, have received confidence to enter the Most Holy Place through the blood of Jesus Christ. When we understand this grace, we will thank God for giving us this day and, relying on the Holy Spirit, live holy lives worthy of God’s children.

6. 💬 What does this passage speak to you today?

Do guilt or shame cause me to avoid God rather than approach him through Jesus?
Have I been approaching God too casually, forgetting that he is perfectly holy?
Is there a sin, fear, burden, or disappointment that I need to bring honestly before God?
Am I trying to earn God’s acceptance through spiritual performance?
What is one area of my life in which God is calling me to live as his holy child today?

7. 🙏 Prayer

Our heavenly Father, thank You for opening the way into Your presence through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Forgive me for running away from You in guilt or approaching You without reverence.

Help me come to You with both confidence and awe, knowing that You receive me as Your beloved child.

Through the Holy Spirit, make my choices, relationships, habits, and work reflect Your holy character today.

Amen.

Scriptures

📖 (Ezekiel 41:1-26, ESV).

1 Then he brought me to the nave and measured the jambs. On each side six cubits was the breadth of the jambs. 2 And the breadth of the entrance was ten cubits, and the sidewalls of the entrance were five cubits on either side. And he measured the length of the nave, forty cubits, and its breadth, twenty cubits. 3 Then he went into the inner room and measured the jambs of the entrance, two cubits; and the entrance, six cubits; and the sidewalls on either side of the entrance, seven cubits. 4 And he measured the length of the room, twenty cubits, and its breadth, twenty cubits, across the nave. And he said to me, “This is the Most Holy Place.”
5 Then he measured the wall of the temple, six cubits thick, and the breadth of the side chambers, four cubits, all around the temple. 6 And the side chambers were in three stories, one over another, thirty in each story. There were offsets all around the wall of the temple to serve as supports for the side chambers, so that they should not be supported by the wall of the temple. 7 And it became broader as it wound upward to the side chambers, because the temple was enclosed upward all around the temple. Thus the temple had a broad area upward, and so one went up from the lowest story to the top story through the middle story. 8 I saw also that the temple had a raised platform all around; the foundations of the side chambers measured a full reed of six long cubits. 9 The thickness of the outer wall of the side chambers was five cubits. The free space between the side chambers of the temple 10 and the other chambers was a breadth of twenty cubits all around the temple on every side. 11 And the doors of the side chambers opened on the free space, one door toward the north, and another door toward the south. And the breadth of the free space was five cubits all around.
12 The building that was facing the separate yard on the west side was seventy cubits broad, and the wall of the building was five cubits thick all around, and its length ninety cubits.
13 Then he measured the temple, a hundred cubits long; and the yard and the building with its walls, a hundred cubits long; 14 also the breadth of the east front of the temple and the yard, a hundred cubits.
15 Then he measured the length of the building facing the yard that was at the back and its galleries on either side, a hundred cubits.
The inside of the nave and the vestibules of the court, 16 the thresholds and the narrow windows and the galleries all around the three of them, opposite the threshold, were paneled with wood all around, from the floor up to the windows (now the windows were covered), 17 to the space above the door, even to the inner room, and on the outside. And on all the walls all around, inside and outside, was a measured pattern. 18 It was carved of cherubim and palm trees, a palm tree between cherub and cherub. Every cherub had two faces: 19 a human face toward the palm tree on the one side, and the face of a young lion toward the palm tree on the other side. They were carved on the whole temple all around. 20 From the floor to above the door, cherubim and palm trees were carved; similarly the wall of the nave.
21 The doorposts of the nave were squared, and in front of the Holy Place was something resembling 22 an altar of wood, three cubits high, two cubits long, and two cubits broad. Its corners, its base, and its walls were of wood. He said to me, “This is the table that is before the LORD.” 23 The nave and the Holy Place had each a double door. 24 The double doors had two leaves apiece, two swinging leaves for each door. 25 And on the doors of the nave were carved cherubim and palm trees, such as were carved on the walls. And there was a canopy of wood in front of the vestibule outside. 26 And there were narrow windows and palm trees on either side, on the sidewalls of the vestibule, the side chambers of the temple, and the canopies.

7-Step Quiet Time Devotional