"I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands." Genesis 32:10

I call your attention to the present tense as it is used in the text - Jacob does not say, as we might half have thought he would have said, "I was not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which thou has shewed unto thy servant," but he says, "I am not worthy." He does not merely allude to his unworthiness when he crossed this Jordan with a staff in his hand, a poor solitary banished man: he believes that he was unworthy then; but even now, looking upon his flocks and his herds and his great family, and all that he had done and suffered, he cries, "I am not worthy."

What, has not all God's mercy made you worthy? Brethren, free grace is neither the child nor the father of human worthiness. If we get all the grace we ever can get we shall never be worthy of that grace; for grace as it enters where there is no worthiness, so it imparts to us no worthiness afterwards as we are judged before God. When we have done all, we are unprofitable servants; we have only done what it was our duty to have done.

To touch the praise which comes to us through the operations of divine grace, even with our little finger, were treason against the Most High. To assume for a moment that we deserve anything of the Lord God, is so vainglorious, so false, so unjust that we ought to loathe the very thought of it, and cry like Jacob, "I am not worthy." Job, who had defended himself with vigor and possibly with bitterness, no sooner heard God speaking to him in the whirlwind than he cried, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee: Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5,6) Prostate before the throne is the proper attitude of prayer: in humility is our strength for supplication.

C.H. Spurgeon, Day By Day, 01/11