If you were to ask me 10 years ago what I would be doing with my life, I never thought I’d say that I would be in ministry, writing about the ways in which God has moved in my life. The funny thing is, I also never thought that losing a part of me (literally, having my large intestine removed) would ultimately help me discover an even bigger part of myself. I never thought that a journey of physical healing would actually lead me to the spiritual healing I needed as well.
If there is one thing I want people to understand, it’s this:
God’s grace is all we need.
At times, we can easily get caught up in the 'shame game' and the 'guilt trap.' We think about our mistakes, our shortcomings, and those feelings of not being good enough creep up from time to time. I don’t know how or what happened, but somewhere down the line we’ve been misinformed on what defines our worth, and we have a misconstrued belief that our approach to God is reliant on our own efforts and whether or not we are worthy enough.
Did you know that when Jesus died, He not only died to clear our sinful debt, but he gave His life so that He could also give us the gift of grace?
Grace is not a word to be taken lightly. Grace from God is so much more than what we think, and I believe that if we truly understood the meaning of this gift, it would completely change our approach to God and how we view ourselves. The reason God gave us this gift of grace was so that we did not have to earn our way into heaven. It’s a gift that offers mercy, love and forgiveness, no matter what. Grace is God’s way of showing us His love for all of our broken pieces in the midst of a fallen and broken world.
Sometimes, we feel that we must try to prove our worth to God. Believe it or not, that effort alone can actually drive a wedge in your relationship with God.
We are not capable of proving our worth to God. We are always going to fall short. This is why we need the gift of grace. There is nothing we have to do except believe that Jesus came to this Earth for one specific reason: to put the down payment on our inheritance, which is our ticket to heaven. Just believing those words is the beginning of salvation. It’s a simple truth that required a big sacrifice.
That’s too easy though, isn’t it? We should have to do more work to earn that ticket, right?
That’s what our enemy, Satan, wants us to think. Satan wants to guilt us, shame us, and trick us into thinking that heaven is too far away and we have sinned too much to ever be able to earn that ticket. However, the beautiful thing about Jesus is that He endured it all so that we don’t have to earn anything—He did it so He could make it easy for us to start a relationship with Him. Believing that truth is the beginning of the relationship. You are worth it to Him on your best days just as much as you are worth it to Him on your worst days.
For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so no one can boast. –Ephesians 2:8-9
Life is not about earning and deserving; it’s about believing and receiving.
The truth is, we need God’s grace. We not only need to receive it, but we need to be changed by it. It is through grace that we are able to have faith, and faith is what we use to fill the gaps between our trials and our triumphs. We were never meant to be perfect. If perfection were necessary, Jesus would never have had to live a blameless, perfect and holy life as a sacrifice for our salvation. He died for us so that through a relationship with Him, we could realize that He gives us everything we need, because He alone is enough. Jesus didn’t die because He was forced to-He died because He wanted to. He decided to step down from the throne in heaven and all of its glory, into a broken, corrupt, and sinful world because you and I were worth the cost of His life-for our salvation.
So, it’s time to throw all of our shame and guilt out the window. You can quit feeling inadequate. Know that God doesn’t want us to be strong or perfect, because it is through our weaknesses that allows God to refine our strength through a demonstration of His power. And His power is worth sharing with the world.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” –2 Corinthians 12:9
Jesus died so that He could give us the gift of grace. He always knew that you were sooo worth it.
Love and light,
Stephanie Jo