When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life-Transforming Grace

by Ruth Chou Simons

All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, “You must do this. I can’t.” —C. S. LEWIS, MERE CHRISTIANITY

This is not a call to get busy; it’s a call to get discerning.

Is it possible that we keep trying to answer the wrong question—“Am I enough?”—when we’re really wanting to know: “Is God enough?”

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

We might not say we believe a Jesus-plus-our-efforts idea of the gospel, but when we place our performances on the pedestal of personal progress, we’re not relying on the grace of God. We’re worshiping the gospel of self-reliance. Self-reliance is something we can control, manipulate, and measure according to our efforts. Grace, on the other hand, is countercultural with its rejection of self-sufficiency and its relinquishing of power.

What must I do to be enough here?

This endless striving is what I struggled with in those early days of my youth—and still struggle with today. While being tenacious and not easily broken can be helpful when adjusting to new environments, the other side of it is sometimes a tendency toward people-pleasing, shape-shifting, and bending oneself to seek another’s approval. Resilience can be Malleable and Compliant’s tougher older sister. The “You go, girl” armor to our “Am I enough?” Even the dictionary gives pliable as a synonym for the word resilience. Either quality can be an asset—or a burden. Bending easily but not easily broken was simultaneously freeing and oppressing for me. Who doesn’t want to know resilience? But somewhere along the way I detoured onto the path toward becoming, instead, someone pleasing. Someone others favored.

We are living the now and not yet. And in this in between, we can mistake not yet for not enough if we’re not grounded in what the Bible actually says about God’s favor and how we receive

We’re not yet sinless, but his forgiveness is enough to make us clean. We’re not yet with him face-to-face, but his presence is enough to sustain us. We’re not yet fully transformed, but his glory is enough to declare us worthy.

Instead of deeply rooting ourselves within the substance of God’s grace, we keep trying to fit grace into the framework of our own soil for success—a framework that feeds on our innate pressure to perform ...

When you believe your only hope is God’s grace, you’ll respond with gratitude and relief. When you believe it’s up to you to perfectly please God, you’ll struggle with guilt and fear. And if you believe God is unknowable, unkind, or unfair in what he asks of his creation, you’ll stop trying to know him at

You see, none of those choices are made in the moment; they are formed long before we decide to act on them with our eyes, hands, or lips. What we believe about what God’s given and what we think we need determines the choices we make. We were made to please God alone. He created us out of his good pleasure:

Sin didn’t just cause our misalignment; it blocked our ability to truly desire alignment with our Creator, God, as we ought.

Everything God says about himself in the Word of God and every way he’s revealed himself to creation and to his children has always been to declare: I am faithful, in spite of your faithlessness. So if you find yourself constantly

The gospel can feel like old news if we believe it merely good for salvation and miss its potency for true life.

The gospel felt stale to me—the stuff of Vacation Bible School—and more like a membership card than an active lifeline.

Paul didn’t become a better version of himself or a godlier Jew; Paul became completely God’s.

When we wrongly think that the gospel simply makes us better, we will endlessly strive in our own strength. But when we receive the grace of God as our only credential—the one thing that gives us a place and purpose in the kingdom of God—we live as those appointed, given the power and authority of the Father for all that he’s given us to do.

Turns out, all our efforts to skirt the feelings of disappointment keep us from the very surrender we were meant to know. We were meant to experience the reality and disappointment of never being enough in our own merits and abilities.

No good can result from efforts made apart from faith in Jesus.

Without love, our acts of faith are but a production—a show. Deliverance, according to the Pharisees, came through following rules. Their striving was about themselves, not God. If it had been about Jesus, they wouldn’t have repackaged manmade rules as God’s commands.

That with enough practice, enough resources, and enough work, a perfectly executed version of your life is accessible. This generation is declaring: Be your own boss and make yourself happy! Save yourself!

Can you be perfect enough to ensure happiness?

“It’s a process without end. . . . if we’re only okay as long as we are striving, moving, developing, then we’re never okay.”2 We want to feel okay. We want to be enough. We want to arrive at the finish line as the winners. And we keep believing we can make it happen if we just optimize our performance and carry it out flawlessly. I feel a GraceLaced hand-lettered

What is your only comfort in life and in death? A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.3

Our self-acceptance, then, according to God’s Word, isn’t something we will discover with enough self-love but is rather an extension of the work of redemption in our lives when we discover how much God loves us. We were made to belong to Jesus first. Not to religious affiliation, political parties, justice movements, or social circles. We don’t even primarily belong to our children, parents, churches, or spouses.

God loves us so much that he rescued us from the grip of anything else that promises to satisfy, and instead he made us belong to him alone. This

We’re not working tirelessly and endlessly to somehow become a version of ourselves that is more desirable or acceptable to some unachievable standard.

When we seek to control others through wielding the power of shame, we are telling God that he is not enough to make wrong right.

We are telling him that he’s not capable enough to change another’s heart.

We are believing those lies when we try to manipulate our own way out of shame as well. How do we do this? Tim Keller put it this way: Religious persons obey to get leverage over God, to control him, to put him in a position where they think he owes them. Therefore, despite their moral and religious fastidiousness, they are actually attempting to be their own saviors. Christians, who know they are only saved by grace and...

Sometimes we just don’t see how much we’re striving until we see how worn out we are from trying to attain something God wants to give us through himself.

We often think this parable is about God’s love and restoration of us, the shamed sinners. But it’s equally about God’s exhortation to us, the self-righteous shamers.

He preemptively rescued his sinful son by bearing shame himself.

So make no mistake, this is not a fluffy promise found in self-affirmation or self-love; it is anchored in what Scripture says about God’s love,

He was not rejoicing in obedience because his obedience had been motivated out of self-righteousness and self-protection. He believed he deserved to be rewarded in accordance with his outward goodness

She’s quick to point out the missed opportunity and the better option. She’s too overwhelmed with analyzing what could have been to enjoy what actually is, right now.

Our Enemy knows he can fool us. When we are ruled by the Try Harder regime, we think we are getting closer to our perception of God when we’re really just getting ever closer to the worship of self.

God satisfies with his Word. “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). God satisfies with his presence. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11). God satisfies with his rule over everything. “Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10 NASB).

The psalmist wrote a song contrasting the turmoil of our lives with God’s mighty power and infinitely greater strength.

But the closing of this Psalm ends with words from God himself, and they aren’t warm and fuzzy; they’re more of a command. The original Hebrew word used here means to relax, release, to let go of your death grip, to stop wringing your hands in anxious worry.

“Enough already. I’m enough, and you are not. So stop trying to fix everything and rest in me.”

We can call it spiritual discipline, hard work, commitment, or pursuit of holiness, but if it’s motivated by self-fulfillment or self-improvement, it’s not a worship of God; it’s a worship of self.

What if our striving is really worship of ourselves as god?

satisfaction. God wasn’t micromanaging how his children received his gifts; he was preparing them to understand that the promised land was just the beginning, but none of what was to come could ever be accessed through self-striving. He was after their hearts.

Maybe, like the Israelites, we are so wired to doubt anything we’ve not earned that we miss the ticket of admission into God’s promises: the gift of grace.

Do we keep hustling anxiously but pray that we will do it with God’s strength?

Where does striving end and trusting begin?

You’ve struggled to understand the place for good works if grace saves us. You’re tired of trying to measure up to other people’s standards. You can’t decide if God is pleased with you or disappointed in you.

You want to grow and change but don’t know how it really happens.