There is no striving in His grace.

With school back in session, my life currently revolves around nothing but school, interning, Jesus, and every once in awhile, sleep. Because school and homework are not stressful enough then you throw keeping up with grades on top of there and it is just a LOVELY combination. {insert sarcasm} I don’t know about you, but I am a perfectionist, along with being type A and OCD, I am about as big as a perfectionist as they get. My life's motto is the more details and organization the better. I like to have my ducks in a row and to have everything be in the right place.

So when it comes to my grades, it just pushes me off the edge if I am not doing good. I strive for A’s and 100% ‘s, I long to do good, and nothing less than that will satisfy. Nothing is good enough till I reach “Perfection”.

Recently, I got super frustrated with one course I am enrolled in because it just wasn’t working. It seemed like no assignment I turned in or how many hours I studied mattered, nothing could ever be enough to get a good grade. I could never retain enough information for tests to be easy and not stressful and I was beginning to stress obsessively over it. On top of really weird circumstances I couldn’t control that were affecting my grades, I found myself looking at my grades for the class feeling a complete and utter failure. With it being my Senior year, my stress has been at an all time high over school and how I am doing because we all know good grades equal more help offered by colleges in the future. There is a weight that is put on students by the world and society that in order to do well in life you must have 4.0’s and be in AP classes. I mean it’s true, we all look at the person taking all AP classes and think, “Wow good for them” don’t we? So that one day we can get into our dream college and get our dream job and our live happily ever after. And so if anything falls short of the world’s standards then you are a failure.

There was the whisper inside my head that said, “You are failing. Just work harder.” I sat there with tears in my eyes as I thought, “Maybe I’m just not good enough. Maybe I need to work harder. Maybe then I won’t be such a failure.” It was all I could hear and I couldn't make it stop.

You are failing.

Work harder.

I sat in my room as tears starting to trickle down my face because I had convinced myself I wouldn’t ever be enough. After awhile, my mom came in and sat on my floor and said two words, “Stop Striving.”

“Your worth is not found in what the world thinks of you or in your grades. Your worth comes from Christ and Him alone, and nothing will ever change that. Stop striving and live freely.”

I knew I was striving and that I was too worried in what the world said about me. So I decided to jump in and see what the Bible had to say about it. But first, striving according to google is, “ to make great efforts to achieve or obtain something.”  But what this does fail to mention, is that rarely is there ever anything worth striving for in life, that will at a point satisfy you. It doesn’t matter how hard you strive to get good grades or make your life look good, it will always lead to unfulfillment and feeling as if we have yet to reach the bar because it is always just a little higher up than we thought. In John 6:26-28 it says,

Jesus answered, “You’ve come looking for me not because you saw God in my actions but because I fed you, filled your stomachs—and for free. Don’t waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last.”

What Jesus is saying is that those things in your life that you think will fulfill your desire to be perfect are worthless. If you do not find your worth in Jesus and in Him alone, you will always have this hunger, this void, this unfulfillment in life. Only in Jesus can you find a full life, the very best life He has planned for you. Nothing else matters in comparison to Him.

But why Jesus? How does He free us from striving?

"There is no striving in His grace."

Over the last two years of following Jesus, I still am overwhelmed by one thing, GRACE. It still leaves me in awe and in tears whenever I think about it. Grace is a gift you and I could never earn, it is something He gives freely because that is how much He loves us.

Grace fills in our gaps, it fills our emptiness and heals brokenness. I did absolutely nothing to deserve grace, it was in my darkest moments He saw me and called me His. Even when I wanted nothing to do with God and Church, He was still pursuing me. He saw me at my worst and still came running. When you surrender your life to Him and He covers you in His Grace, He no longer sees you and me in our mess, brokenness, and failures, but instead, He sees righteousness because of Jesus and what He did for you on the cross. Which is such good news because it means there is nothing we can ever do to not be worthy enough to receive Grace. We can never strive enough to be perfect or righteous because He already sees us that way to begin with. Not only does it say that He gives grace, but He gives freely and that He gives grace upon grace.

Grace means you no longer have to strive to make yourself look good or do the right things, Grace allows you to live how Christ made you, not bound by the world’s qualifications but to live free in the fact He calls us His sons and daughters who are worthy of His love just as they are and there is nothing they can do to earn it.  You are chosen, redeemed, pursued, loved, called by name, and sought after by the God who holds the world in His hands.

Galatians 3:4-6 says,

“Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!”

Grace means you are free of striving.

You and I no longer have to the meet unrealistic expectations the world has set up. We no longer have to make sure our lives look perfect to the outside world. Because God has made a way for us to live in freedom. We are free to no longer worry about what people say about us, how well your grades are, and how the world sees you. Our worth is not found in our works but in your Savior. So live free and fearlessly in His grace because that is how He created you to be!

 “Cease Striving and know that I am God.” Psalms 46:10

“There is no hiding from your grace. There is no hiding from your face. God almighty. God of Mercy.” ~ Hillsong Worship: Let there be light.