We Love God!

God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)

Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
A.W. Tozer

After the respite, the Christians again came under persecution, this time from Marcus Aurelius, in A.D. 61. One of those who suffered this time was Polycarp, the venerable bishop pf Smyrna... As he entered the stadium with his guards, a voice from heaven was heard to say, 'Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man.' No one nearby saw anyone speaking but many people heard the voice. Brought before the tribunal and the crowd, Polycarp refused to deny Christ, although the proconsul begged him to 'consider yourself and have pity on your great age. Reproach Christ and I will release you.' Polycarp replied, 'Eighty-six years I have served Him, and He never once wronged me. How can I blaspheme my King, who saved me?' Threatened with wild beasts and fire, Polycarp stood his ground.
John Foxe