All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and let work and home and family fend for themselves. I’d had enough. If one more person needed one more thing, I was probably gonna lose it.
Some days are like that. (Like last Wednesday, for example.) Everything and everyone dances on your last nerve, and it’s all you can do to beg God to just help you hold your tongue.
“Janna, that’s not very godly!”
Yeah, it’s really not.
But it’s honest.
The PDL (Performance-Driven Life) version of Janna rarely admitted to having hard days. Before God began to open my eyes to the truth of grace, I was too afraid of what people would think. And I was under the misguided impression that when this God thing really works, we somehow magically turn into “Perfect Christians” with unwavering smiles and Bible verses on our lips.
Thank goodness for grace!
Grace for the Tough Days
Grace says it’s okay to have a hard day.
Sometimes life will pile more on you than you know what to do with. And you may not bounce up immediately with a happy face and “Praise the Lord!” on your lips.
Okay.
Give yourself a little grace. You're allowed to be learning how this grace thing works.
And thankfully, grace doesn't desert us on the tough days.
On the hard days, grace says:
- You’re still loved immeasurably.
- You’re still a new creation.
- You’re still a beloved daughter/son.
- You’re still allowed to approach the throne of grace with all of your stuff.
And when you come to Him, Jesus, in all of His grace, will hug your heart and point you toward His reassuring truth.
Turning the Story Around
That tough day I was reading a grace book that directed me to Colossians – the very N.T. book God used back in the wee beginnings of my grace adventure.
For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself…This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it.
-Colossians 1:19, 21-23
The Colossians had tough days too. Like you and me, they needed a grace reminder. A reminder that God’s immeasurable grace to us in Christ has taken people who were far away from God and drawn them to Himself. His grace has turned sinners into holy, blameless ones. And grace has made former enemies into beloved children.
Our job is simply to believe today. To plant our feet right in the middle of these incredible truths and stand there. Firmly.
And the longer we stand there, the better we get at refusing to let circumstances, opinions, or the stories floating around us to convince us of anything less than God’s love and grace to us in Christ.
Today is one more chance to practice living from the truth of who God says we are and fiercely clinging to the God of all grace.
Because the days aren’t actually “good” or “bad.”
Each day is just one more chance to see God's immeasurable grace at work, in and through us.
