If you have suffered the loss of a family member to chronic disease, if you suffer debilitating seasons of depression, if you have lost your job and livelihood, gone through a divorce that came out of the blue, know that God is not punishing you. He is not waiting for you to do something.

Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace.

The grace of God sets us free from a life of perfection, performing, and pretending.

The deepest cry of the human heart is to be loved without condition, no matter what. The gospel of grace announces that you are.

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. Which means that the Bible is not first a recipe for Christian living but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our un-Christian living.

The deepest fear we have, 'the fear beneath all fears,' is the fear of not measuring up, the fear of judgment. It's this fear that creates the stress and depression of everyday life.

Whatever we may mean by 'Christian growth,' it is ultimately this: less faith in me, more faith in God.