When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life-Transforming Grace

The good life isn’t the absence of heartache; it’s the presence of God, by grace, in the midst of it. Our hope in the midst of hardship is that Jesus doesn’t just work things out for our good—he is our good.

I restate what we see again and again in Scripture? The good life isn’t the absence of heartache; it’s the presence of God, by grace, in the midst of it. Our hope in the midst of hardship is that Jesus doesn’t just work things out for our good—he is our good.

We say we trust that Jesus is enough, but we spend our lives trying to prove we are instead.

Jesus offered deliverance through dependence on him. The Pharisees taught deliverance through dependence on perfection and performance. Friend, performance over presence, God's presence, always leaves us fearfully reliant on our perfect execution, rather than Christ's perfect deliverance.

It's a grace that enables the hope that sustains us in times of uncertainty, pain, and when our lives don't look the way we hoped or expected. God's grace isn't an afterthought for a believer walking through unexpected circumstances; it's the anchor.

What gospel are you preaching to yourself in the corners of your mind where the Enemy has sought to pronounce guilt and condemnation? You need to preach the whole gospel if you are to combat a thorough Enemy of lies.

Could it be that we are so worn and desperate for ways to better ourselves because we’ve missed the power, inherent in the grace of God, that eradicates self-improvement altogether? Is it possible that we keep trying to answer the wrong question— "Am I enough?" —when we’re really wanting to know: "Is God Enough?

how we seek to fix ourselves reveals what we really believe we need. This plays out even in the books we read and who we listen to for counsel.

The holiness of God found us lacking. The mercy of God sent Jesus to bear the punishment we deserved. The righteousness of God declared us forgiven. The goodness of God reshapes us into His likeness. The love of God overcomes evil so that we might share in all that is Christ's.

walked through times and seasons that felt like exile, God was always writing a story in my life that was more than I could imagine.

At the end of our days, when we cross over into glory, we'll have questions that won't seem to matter anymore, and earthly sorrow will pass away. But we won't bring along our resumes, and that stunning career accomplishment will look dingy against the white-hot glory of God's holiness. The number of boxes you checked off next to your Bible reading plan won't be your badge; the seal of the Holy Spirit on a surrendered heart will tell of your arrival. And in the presence of our Holy God, what will keep us from incinerating on the spot will be our safekeeping in the cleft of the Rock-- the covering of grace through the blood of Christ-- that shelters us now and holds us fast into eternity.

We are caught between two worlds in more ways than we know. Some of us are literally navigating changes we didn’t anticipate and the feeling of displacement. Some of us are between two worlds of who we were before Christ and who we want to be in Christ. Some of us are navigating the tension of being the child yet being the parent. And most of us feel the tension between trusting God and trying to control everything for our own good. We are between two worlds: the spiritual and the temporal. Between two worlds: the seen and unseen. Between two worlds who we think others expect us to be and who we know ourselves to be. Between two worlds: the intersection of what we planned and how things really are. And right in the middle of our plans not turning out the way we hope and our inability to see God‘s purposes is where the grace of God changes us even if it doesn’t change our circumstances.

God doesn’t demand obedience and good fruit apart from relationship. He desires our obedience as a result of relationship with him.

Can I restate what we see again and again in scripture: the good life isn't the absence of heartache, it's the presence of God by grace in the midst of it. Our hope is that Jesus doesn't just work things out for our good, He IS our good.

Now we are getting to the heart of how the Gospel differs from the moral grid. As one writer put it, 'The main thing between you and God is not your sins, but your damnable good works.' Ouch. And herein lies the whole reason why we must cease striving through good works: they do not save. If there is a gospel of self-improvement, it is a damning one. It is a gospel that is not good news at all. It will wall you if, shrivel you up, and destroy your sensitivity to God's pursuit. This is why it must be utterly destroyed and replaced with the true gospel of life-transforming grace.

Losing yourself doesn't sound like burdensome striving, but that's the lie the Enemy wants you to believe. That IS the false gospel of this generation: that we can save ourselves through ourselves. That with enough practice, enough resources, and enough work, a perfectly executed version of your life is accessible. This generation is declaring, "Be your own boss and make yourself happy. Save yourself!"... It baffles me that our culture is obsessed with the contradictions of this ideology and equates them with freedom.

Our choosing to forgive others is how we know grace is amazing in our lives.

Both the messy and broken, the pious and pretty, were equally incapable of loving the Lord with all their hearts, minds, souls, and strength. The most foundational command to love God above all else was broken in the garden; how could we possibly fix ourselves and make ourselves fit for God's approval if we aren't even able to love God wholly as we were made to do?

If someone offers you a prescription for what ails you, but the prescription leaves your condition unchanged, it usually means that something is not quite right about either the prescription or the diagnosis. If what we really need in order to stop feeling so worn out and pressed to perform at a certain standard is a better strategy, then why are the prescriptions not working?

Cold orthodoxy, light without heat, was God's accusation of the Church at Ephesus in the book of Revelation. But the early church also often times embraced heat without light. It was a problem then and it's a problem now. You see without light or truth what we do will be left up to opinion, culture, and what feels right. That's the day in which we live.

The only hope we have for feeling the freedom of a debt canceled and paid for, and believing we are no longer condemned, is to continually dwell and rest in the exceedingly greater power of God’s love to rescue us.

that we might live into everything that God purposes for us as grace-made daughters of God.

keeping score is trying another person in the courtroom of your mind and subjecting them to the law you’ve declared and the standard you’ve created. It’s counting their missteps and the ways you’ve covered for them again and again.

we can either wander aimlessly back into the whispers of inadequacy and shouts of condemnation or stand firm on the grace that both saves and defends us against the Enemy’s lies.

The good life isn't the absence of heartache; it's the presence of God, by grace, in the midst of it. Our hope in the midst of hardship is that Jesus doesn't just work things out for our good - he is our good.