SAVED BY GRACE

When I was younger, I constantly felt overwhelmed by the number of things I felt God asked of me. I worried if I was doing enough, serving enough, being enough. I thought that if I invited enough people to church or if I was perfect enough that I would finally be able to earn God's love. The problem with this line of thinking, is that it caused me to resent God. I felt like He was asking too much of me and holding me to unrealistic standards. How could I earn God's love if I was constantly failing? 

I think this is a common experience many of us have. It's hard to come to terms with the fact that God doesn't make us earn our salvation and that God's love is unconditional, in spite of our faults. In fact, He says in Ephesians 2:8-9, "we have been saved by grace and through faith, and not by anything that we've done." So, no matter how many times we've read the Bible, or how many ministries we're a part of, or how much of a "good Christian" we seem to be, we cannot earn God's love. However, this is a comfort because we "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God", according to Rom. 3:23. God knows our faults and knows our failings and chooses to love us anyway.

Even when we fail, we don't have to hide from God or fear retribution. He isn't waiting just around the corner for us to mess up and condemn us.  It can be tempting to go out of our way to show God that He hasn't made a mistake, that we are worth the sacrifice, but we don't have to do that. God doesn't ask for us to bend over backwards to prove anything to Him, He just asks that we love Him with our whole heart. In Micah 6:8, God asks us to "act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly." We have to embrace God's word and live it out in our daily lives. Once we understand that, the rest will come.

There is peace in knowing that God doesn't need us to be perfect, because He already is. God is strong in our weakness, and He gives us the strength to continue in our journeys and become more like Him. 

~Nia Roberts