But grace is a hard concept for many of us. Or, at least, this is the conclusion I draw both from self-examination and observation of how others live.

We all fail to live up to the standard we have set for ourselves. We are all inconsistent in having our actions match what we claim to believe.

It was not until I was pretty far into adulthood that I really began to understand that perfect obedience is not the standard. Jesus came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves.

“When we read scripture, we have to think about whether the people who wrote it might actually have meant something by it. They did! They are talking about the reality of the kingdom of the heavens—the stone that was cut out without hands and is going to wipe out all the nations of the earth […]