Rhythms of God's Grace

“Mom, I feel like everywhere I look, I am not measuring up.”  

My 14-year-old daughter, Kate, sat beside me as we drove through Austin, running a few errands. I was disturbed by what she said. Kate is bright, likable, and easygoing. Why was she feeling like she was losing? Ironically, one day earlier, I sat with my ministry teammates in a conference room and cried, saying almost the same words, “I feel like I’m not enough.” I listened as nearly every teammate said the same thing.  

What is this? Why do we feel like we are not measuring up?

I have the privilege of encouraging and serving women around the world, and I’ve found that so many are tired and thirsty just like us. The question I hear more than any other is, “I want to please God—how do I know what He wants from me?”  

Does that sound familiar?

As Kate and I drove down that Austin highway, three words came to my mind: “rhythms of grace.” She pulled up the paraphrase of Matthew 11:28–30, which reads:

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”  

Kate looked at me as if I’d just handed a parched person a glass of cold water. “Mom, what are ‘unforced rhythms of grace’?” They are found in John 15, where Jesus tells us to stop trying to be vines and learn to be branches. He’s the vine, and we’re meant to live out of His abundance. It’s as if He says, “Listen, your work is to stick near to Me, abide in Me, pray to Me, soak in My words, and love Me. All you need to be is a little, dependent branch; I will make you bear fruit.”  

Yes, Jesus has a big mission for us, but He will cause the big part to happen. He says to us, “I’m going to give Myself to you in the form of the Holy Spirit, and then you’re going to go out, and I will grow fruit through you.”    

Jesus has a remedy for our emptiness, our fatigue, our inadequacies, our sin: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37–38). Do you hear what Jesus is saying? Keep coming back to Me and I will keep satisfying you. And out of that life with Me, you will overflow and bring life to others.

How do we do that?

1.  Believe Jesus  

We begin by really believing Jesus—that He alone will satisfy us if we trust Him. We get alone with Him. We pour out our heart before Him. We get in His Word and we soak in it, memorize it— we drink from it. We ask, seek, and knock.

2.  Participate in the Church  

We also jump fully into our local churches to receive the grace Jesus wants to give us there. We receive biblical teaching and pursue authentic community. We decide to be honest about our struggles, and stop pretending and performing. And we force ourselves out of our own discouraged heads by serving others.

3.  Abide in Jesus   

We abide in Jesus. That’s what the thirsty world out there needs—not impressive people, but to see an impressive God. Your neighbors are going through divorces, the death of children, the effects of abuse, and many hope for what only God can do for them. You can take God to them. It’s what we were built for; it’s what our gifts are for.  

Don’t worry about size, numbers, or reach. The biggest things happen face-to-face, around tables, in living rooms, and in neighborhoods.  

We need to give up trying to measure up. What we really need is to be filled up. Apart from Jesus, we can do nothing (John 15:5). Nothing can stand against the force of God moving through a soul completely in love with Him.