Grace Fuelled Effort

One of the great challenges I’ve found in ministry is helping people to understand the tension between grace and effort in the Christian life. And the tension is real! When we lean too far toward grace without effort, we can drift into what theologians call antinomianism—the belief that how we live no longer matters because it’s all grace. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously described this as “cheap grace,” a gospel that offers forgiveness without transformation.

But if we swing too far in the other direction of effort without grace, then we fall into legalism. We begin to believe that our discipline, resolve, or wisdom can somehow produce spiritual growth. And this is where many Christians live: stuck somewhere in between. Unsure of how grace and effort actually work together. The result is often spiritual stagnation rather than spiritual transformation.

Peter addresses this tension in 2 Peter 1.5-7, when he writes:
 

“Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” (ESV)

Notice that Peter doesn’t shy away from the language of effort. He uses the phrase “make every effort” to describe a sustained and purposeful diligence in the pursuit of godliness. He then explains why this matters in verse 8:
 

“For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

What Peter is saying is that if we do not make a deliberate effort to grow spiritually, our faith risks becoming ineffective and unfruitful.  He goes on in verse 9 to warn that those who fail to develop these virtuous qualities are spiritually short-sighted and blind, forgetting the great price Jesus paid for their salvation.

For some, this passage can feel uncomfortable. Words like “make every effort” and “add to your faith” may sound like works-based religion. Isn’t the Christian life about what Christ has done for us, not what we do?

Absolutely! Peter is not describing how we are saved, but how we grow after we have been saved. Our effort is not the cause of our salvation; it is the evidence of it (v.10). This is why Peter can call us to “make every effort” without contradicting the gospel because our ability to grow does not depend on ourselves, but on the grace and power of God.

He makes this clear earlier in verse 3, reminding us that “God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.” Spiritual growth is possible for every believer because God, in His kindness, has already provided everything we need to grow. In other words, God is committed to your spiritual growth!

So let’s resist the temptation to live in the polarising tension of grace versus effort, as though we must choose one or the other. When it comes to growth in godliness, trusting does not put an end to trying. Instead, let’s be disciplined and purposeful in our spiritual growth, pursuing it with grace-fueled effort, so that our faith will not be stagnant or ineffective, but increasingly fruitful for the glory of God.

Come with nothing

How do you feel about yourself as a Christian? 

Perhaps you feel like a failure. Your prayer life is patchy (at best), and your Bible reading plan is a distant memory. When you’re at church, you look around at the ‘good Christians’ and wish for the same picture-perfect devotion. To make it worse, you’re battling the same old sins, which never seem to abate.

Or maybe you feel good. You pray and read the Bible daily, and give generously each month. Your family is walking with the Lord, and you’ve evangelised to several colleagues over the last few weeks. The battle over sin feels easy, and life feels fruitful.

However you feel—flourishing or failing—the truth is that we come to the Father with empty hands. He’s not checking your good works at the door with a sign reading ‘only successes allowed’. Nope. You come to the Father through Jesus’ spotless record, counted as your own. Whether you’ve had the best or worst week, you are covered with Christ’s perfection, not your failures or achievements. You bring nothing.

This is at the heart of our homegrown song Come to the King. It’s an invitation to return to God with all our brokenness, sin, and weakness. As one line puts it:

“Bring all your heart, you’re welcomed as you are.” 

God doesn’t ask us to polish ourselves up beforehand, but to come empty-handed and messy and let him do the mending.


Come with nothing, together.

But there’s another layer to the song. Although it began as a moment of personal devotion, Come to the King is also a song for the church. We return to God in community. On our own, we often become paralysed by guilt, shame, introspection and despair. We need words of encouragement and challenge, and the regular rhythms of life groups and Sunday services to shake us out of ourselves. Shoulder to shoulder, we come with nothing, together.

So, when writing Come to the King, we made a few intentional moves. In the first draft of the chorus, there was no ‘all we need’, only ‘all I need’, which we quickly changed. We wanted something we could belt out together, as one church family. And when our producer suggested recording group vocals, we were keen to try it out. During our Worship Team Night in August, we set up a couple of microphones, filled the room, and recorded the bridge and final chorus live. Rather than only one or two voices, this song now has 25.

Come to the King drops next Friday (14th Nov) across streaming platforms, and we can’t wait to share it with you. We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we have, and that it causes you to worship without striving or performance.

Until then, you can pre-save the song here so it’s waiting for you on release day.

The best things in life are free

There’s a line from Ed Sheeran’s The A Team that struck me recently: “The worst things in life come free to us.” It rings painfully true. Disease, injustice, grief, depression, and death all arrive uninvited, barging into our lives without warning or cost. Ed was on to something.

But it's only half the picture. Because the best things in life are free too. The deepest sources of truth, beauty, and goodness aren’t bought—they’re received. They come as sheer gifts, poured out by a generous Father.

​In light of this, here are three of life’s greatest treasures that are ours to (freely) enjoy.
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Creation

Living in a capital city, we can easily overlook the wonder of nature. For starters, there’s just less to see. Light pollution and the abundance of concrete make the stars dimmer, and wild spaces scarcer. But even so, life has a way of finding the gaps in the tarmac - the sun still dawns in unrestrained beauty, the birds still sing, the clouds still form their patchwork quilts. Creation quietly insists on being noticed.

Step outside the city and the spectacle widens: oceans, forests, mountains, skies that stretch unbroken. It’s all from God, who loves to shower us—all humanity in fact—with undeserved common grace.
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People​

The people God places in our lives are among his sweetest gifts. For most of us, the love and company of family make life’s highs higher, and its lows more bearable. We didn’t choose our family (sometimes that’s obvious!), but God chose them for us and knitted them into our lives with great intentionality. We never earned their kindness, but he knows we need it.

And when family is absent or strained, God’s grace is no less evident. He gives us friends—often in unexpected ways. Most of my closest peers are not those I consciously invested in from the get-go, but old flatmates, life group members, and school friends. God sovereignly brought us together, and the rest is history.


Jesus

This gift surpasses all others. We get to enjoy time with Jesus every day. He speaks to us through the Bible, hears us as we pray, and nourishes us as we take communion. He encourages and challenges us through prophecy and the faithful words of a friend. He walks with us and loves us. He loves us, he loves us, he loves us.

This intimacy was never guaranteed. Once estranged from God because of our sin, we had no claim to it. But Jesus closed the gap, choosing the cross and paying the debt. The treasure of knowing God is now ours to enjoy, the invoice already settled. Into eternity we go, an endless discovery of his love freely given.


Wherever you find yourself today, why not enjoy God’s gifts and let them stir up thanks? Take 10 minutes away from your desk to walk through a park. Reconnect with a friend. Most importantly, spend time with your saviour who paid for your life so that you don’t have to.

Our Merciful God

What would you say if you were asked, “What is so different about your God?” In a world with so many options of who or what to worship, what sets the God of the Bible, the God perfectly revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, apart from all others? 

The question is not a new one. In fact, it is a recurring theme in the Old Testament. What makes Israel’s God greater than the idols of the nations? One of the primary answers that the Old Testament gives us is this: he is merciful.

The Old Testament writers had deeply meditated on God’s words in Exodus 34 when he “told Moses his name”. He reveals himself as “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” (Exodus 34.6). That verse is the most referenced in the rest of the Old Testament.

If your view of God in the Old Testament is influenced by the prevalent caricatures in our culture, this might seem surprising. However, the God revealed in the pages of scripture—from Genesis to Revelation—is a God of astonishing mercy. Here are three precious Old Testament texts that remind us of this unique attribute.


More merciful than our idols

“Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger for ever, because he delights in steadfast love.”  Micah 7.18 

When setting up a contrast between the true God and other “gods”, the prophet Micah zeroes in on the fact that God is a forgiving God. He does not reluctantly receive us—perhaps after we have proved just how sorry we are and sufficiently punished ourselves—but rather delights in showing steadfast love to his people.

The fact that God is more merciful than our idols holds true whether a person worships Baal and Molech or our culture’s more subtle idols like money and beauty. A person who idolises money is crushed when they make a bad investment or miss out on a pay rise. There is no grace from the idol of money,  only a demand to try harder and do better. It’s the same for anything else we put in the place of the true God. But our God is different because when we fail him—as we do every day—he is merciful.


More merciful than us

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55.6–8

Many of us associate the last verse quoted above with the reality that God is wiser and knows better than us. While that is true, it’s not the passage’s main focus. Reading that verse in context, the message is clear – God is more merciful than we are.

We often count ourselves out of God’s mercy and think thoughts like “surely God could never forgive someone like me who has done [insert grievous sin]”. But our God unreservedly invites the wicked and unrighteous to forsake their ways and receive his compassion and abundant pardon. If you feel condemned about some seemingly unforgivable sin, you can take comfort in the truth that God is more merciful than you.


Merciful and just

“But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53.5–6

We know instinctively that wrong deeds should be punished and feel outraged when a guilty person goes free. Other deities may claim to be merciful, but even if this were true, it would not make them like our God. In fact, their mercy would be an evil rather than good quality, because it would be an unjust mercy.

The final way our God differentiates himself is in showing both mercy and justice. His is a just mercy. He does not forgive us by ignoring our sins, relativising them or letting us go because we have done more good than bad. No, he leaves no bad deed unpunished. He can show us mercy because he has punished another for our guilt. The perfect Son of God became our sin-bearing substitute so we could spend eternity delighting in our merciful God.