Grace, Receiving our way out of a war with god

​I grew up believing that when you make a mistake, you have to run to God as quickly as possible to retrieve his forgiveness. You do this, I believed, not to live in some peaceful state with God. You do it in an attempt to talk God out of going to war against you.

Do you know what it's like living in a relationship where you're always trying to talk the other party out of going to war against you?

It's fearful. It's exhausting. Attempting to love God the way I thought God needed loved used to be one of the most exhausting endeavors of my life.

Then one day God flipped the script on exhaustion. He volunteered for the most exhausting death one can imagine, all for the chance to say to me, my forgiveness is your path to peace.

It never again needs to feel like the threat of war.

My forgiveness is here for you when you most need it, he said, and when you feel like you least deserve it. Let's just call this blanket forgiveness, grace.

Grace when you come to retrieve it. Grace when you forget you already have it. It covers you always.

Like a blanket.

Some nights when I sleep, I forget the blankets are on me. Even though I have to have the room cold enough to always NEED blankets.

But there are other nights when I'm fully aware of those blankets. Maybe it's a particularly cold night. And I cling to them as if they know just how much I need them in that frigid moment. In those moments, I am fully aware of just what I am receiving from those blankets.

Savannah Guthrie says this about grace: "I see that receiving God's grace is the ultimate bonding experience with him."

The last several years, I have felt a closer bond with God than ever. And to be honest, not many years ago this would have been a period in my life I would have been more afraid of God than ever.

Because I have wrestled with things that could have left me feeling less deserving of God's grace than ever before. But instead, I have thought of God as that blanket on one of the coldest nights of my life.

I have felt the comfort of that blanket. I have clung to it. I have received its peace.

The difference between God's peace and God's desire to be at war with us is never about God. It is always about us. It is always about us knowing we can never earn our way out of a war with God. We can only receive our way out.

Receive what has already been given, whether we show up to ask for it or forget that it's already there.

Grace.

God paying the exhaustive price to relieve our exhaustion.

Peace.