Most of the really big ideas about Christianity take 10 or 20 years to sink in. This is especially so with the idea of grace.

When I became a follower of Jesus, I was taught that God loved me and I was saved by grace—and I believed it. But I also figured it was up to me to prove that God had not made a mistake. Like many men, I had grown up in a performance-based culture; if you want the reward, you have to perform.

So I went from being a secular workaholic to a Christian workaholic, performing good works tirelessly to deserve God’s love. I hoped that would make Him happy—or at least avoid His wrath. I also wanted to live up to my perceived expectations of other believers, even though I wasn’t spiritually mature enough to tell which expectations were real and which ones I was imagining.

This kind of thinking is perfectly designed to produce despair—no matter how much you do, it’s never enough. And that’s exactly what happened. By the 10-year mark in my spiritual journey, I was exhausted. I still did not understand grace.

At the same time, I could see my friends were getting a very different result from their faith than I was. Finally, I called a time out. I thought that I would read the Bible, figure out what adjustments needed to be made, and then everything would be fine in a couple of weeks.

God had a different view. It was as though He said, “Now that I have your attention, there are some things I’ve been wanting to show you.”

Three months later I was plunged into a business crisis that lasted seven years. It was excruciating. I wondered what I could have done that was so terrible that I deserved to be so utterly and completely crushed—and I stepped up my efforts to prove that I was worthy of God’s love and gift of salvation.

But I also started reading the Bible with purpose, and as I did, I began to see things that had been incomprehensible to me before.

Early one morning, I was pouring my heart out to God because I was so worn out trying to hold together a business that was falling apart. Begging Him for relief, I recounted for Him all the good deeds and sincere efforts that I’d been putting forth.

I prayed, “God, you know how hard I’ve been working to love You with my whole heart, to love my wife as Christ loves the church, to be a dad who’s in the picture, to be a good steward with the finances You’ve entrusted to me, to be a man of integrity, to be generous beyond tithing. God, you know how many little old ladies I’ve helped across the street! God, you know all these things. What else do I need to do?”

Then I heard a voice in my head: “Pat, nothing you do will ever make you good enough for Me to love you. I love you because I made you.”

And that morning was the first time I understood grace. I had been a Christian for 14 years.

Because you and I live in a performance-based culture for all but a few hours each week, our natural default will always be to earn, deserve, prove, and perform. This is why the full sense of the concept of grace often takes so long to sink in.

Do you feel like you are not “good enough,” haven’t done enough, or have one more thing you still need to add?

What you need to know about grace—#29 on my alphabetical list of 70 things every man needs to know, boils down to this:

• No matter what you’ve done, you can be forgiven.
• Because of sin, you will never be good enough to grasp salvation.
• Because of grace, you will never be bad enough to be outside of God’s grasp.

Being a faithful Christian is not about modifying your behavior to earn God’s love. The only requirement for becoming—and remaining—a Christian is to admit that you’re not worthy to be one and need Jesus.

Because of grace, instead of feeling weighed down by the ways you fall short or by man-made rules, you can walk in the power of the Spirit day by day and lead an abundant life by faith.

About once a week, my computer gets so crossed up that the only solution is to reboot—to push the restart button. Grace is like that restart button—I know that nothing I do will ever make me good enough for God to love me. He loves me because He made me.

Keep pushing restart until that sinks in. Because grace is not just the frosting on the cake. It’s the main ingredient.

For reflection and discussion: 

1. Where in your life have you been living like you need to perform for God’s approval?
2. What might hitting the restart button of grace look like for you this week?
3. How would your spiritual and emotional life change if you truly believed God already loves and accepts you—fully, freely, and forever?