To tell it like it is, we all need mercy. John Bunyan once said, “When I saw John Bunyan as God saw John Bunyan, I did not say that I was a sinner; I said that I was sin from the top of my head to the sole of my feet.”

Standing in the presence of the holy God will do that to a person. Isaiah’s glimpse of God’s presence in the temple, for example, made him cry out, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts!” (Isa. 6:5).