The heart of discipleship does not rest on our ability to white-knuckle our way into spiritual perfection, but on our willingness to surrender to an un-thwartable reality: God loves us, and we have absolutely no say in the matter. For many of us, our formatting in religious environments has led us to believe that God’s affection and acceptance are tightly bound to our moral performance. We look at communities of faith and assume everyone else possesses an extraordinary level of discipline that we simply cannot muster, leaving us standing against the back wall of the room, keeping our arms crossed and plotting a quick exit. We mistakenly separate ourselves into “believers” and “behavers,” paralyzed by the assumption that if we cannot perfectly execute the behaviors, we have no business claiming the identity.
The Matter With You
Too many of us walk through life carrying an unspoken, heavy doubt about whether God actually loves us as individuals. While we might intellectually nod along to the broad, cultural