If the first impression following an experiential acquaintance with the King of kings is an acute sense of estrangement, the second would be confrontation. Again in the words of the 19th century German pastor, F.W. Krummacher,

The Lord calls you by name, and while the relation in which you have hitherto stood to Him, and in which He has stood to you, was a relation of estrangement, between Him and you there has begun a momentous confrontation. You stand before His bar. What will you choose? You can no longer think of escape.  Rather there remains for you now nothing else than to fall down at His feet as Mephibosheth did, and to resign yourself wholly up to His grace or His displeasure, with the humble cry, ‘Here am I, your servant!”

This is the unmasking work of the Holy Spirit. It is the convicting work – whereby we stand before God’s bar, entirely dependent upon His grace and kindness.  He will not disappoint. Krummacher continues,

Also here many a sinner who has found grace will see as in a mirror a picture of his own experience.  To such an one there is the consciousness that the grace of God humbles even more than His wrath.  He cannot comprehend how he should be made a partaker of so great a thing.

Do you ever wrestle with the reality of the greatness of God’s grace and mercy in Christ?  How incomprehensible it is that vile, helpless, hopeless sinners can be on the receiving end of such life-changing mercy!