For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. —Ephesians 2: 8–9 (NASB)

What you do morally matters.

I’m tempted to say what you do morally is the most important thing in the world, but it’s not. It’s the second most important thing in the world.

Instead, your identity is the number one most important thing because in the end your identity will not only guide your actions, but your happiness as well.

When you know you are the beloved of God, you will usually do good because it comes naturally, rather than do good out of willpower.

When you are living in your true identity as the beloved, being a good person has nothing to do with trying harder.

You do good for others because it’s what is most natural to you.

Therefore, the only way to be a joyful, moral person is, ironically, to let go of your identity as a moral person and embrace your identity as the beloved.

If you want to do good but lack the power to do so, it’s likely because you are trying to do good from a place of shame rather than a place of grace. You’re constantly beating yourself up in the hopes you’ll get your life together.

Maybe you were taught to do this by your parents or through sermons you’ve heard in the past: “When you mess up, you beat yourself up so you won’t do it again.” When we do this, we are actually making things worse, not better.

Because this person’s identity is about being a moral person more than about being beloved, when he messes up (and he will mess up), he is now tempted to hide his mistake.

In the beginning, he will confess his mistakes, but because his morality is so closely linked to his identity, he won’t be able to keep it up and will eventually lose that identity for one of immorality. Or he will become a person with two identities: the moral one that everyone sees and the private, immoral one he sees in the mirror.

God has a better idea. Just let go and be loved right where you are. Let go of the felt need and pressure to be perfect all the time. God will form in you a moral heart only at the point where you are at peace with your flaws and imperfections, because it’s only there you receive grace. When you are at peace with your shortcomings and don’t link them to your identity, then it is not so painful to work on those things with others.

You’ll stop saying to yourself, “I will be worthy of love when I earn it.” Right there in that place, unearned love from God and others will foster gratitude and joy in your heart that will lead to altruism and goodness.

When you truly believe you are loved by God just as you are, you can let go of your works and good deeds as an identity and inherit the power to actually become a good person.

Yes, it takes time for our hearts and actions to change, but in the end, people who feel loved by God and others are moral and happy. You are not your morality. You are beloved.

It’s easy to think we are his beloved children because of our good deeds, our moral compass, or our spiritual trophies. But when we mess up, as we always do, we feel deep shame, confusion, and may even leave or lose our faith.

Many of us are on a “holy coaster,” never finding our home in our true spiritual family. We have spiritual highs where we feel close to God and others, then lows where we don’t even know if we believe in God or think he’s abandoned us because of our mistakes, or feel isolated from others.

We feel we are not family in the house of God, only well-behaved guests. This will never do. You belong in spite of your flaws and imperfections.

All of our sin and spiritual pain begins with a haunting inner voice that says, You’re not enough. You don’t belong. Try harder. You don’t do enough. You’re a screw-up. God is ashamed of you. Hide your imperfections. Many of these thoughts are often unconscious feelings, but if we talk about them or pay attention to them, we see they are strong. They are at the heart of many of the very actions we are ashamed of. They are at the heart of our self-rejection, and self-rejection leads to death because we agree with the voice of the Accuser rather than the voice of the Father.

Henri Nouwen put it best in a sermon he gave at the Crystal Cathedral. He said: Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, “Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody” . . . [My dark side says] I am no good . . . I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.”

Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.

Let go of those soul-harming words, because they are not from God.

God says over you, “My dear child, there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. I’m not here to condemn you. I’m here to give you life and peace” (see Rom. 8: 1).

All joy and life comes from the voice that says, “You are my beloved child and I’m proud of you. You and I will get through life together. When you mess up, I’ve got your back. I wish you could see the future I have planned for you. It’s amazing!”

This is why it is written that the Devil is called “the accuser of our brethren” (Rev. 12: 10 KJV) and the Holy Spirit is called “the Comforter” (John 14: 26 KJV).

God is always on your side. Love what is good and hate what is evil, but never let your identity as a moral person become the reason for personal worth and belonging. If we find our identity in what we do and don’t do morally, messing up causes us to believe we are no longer worthy of love, compassion, belonging, and deep connection.

We become afraid of reaching out to others in our woundedness.

We feel isolated, alone, and ashamed. These emotions won’t make you a better person.

Give up your identity in what you do and live in the freedom of God’s love and forgiveness. You are not what you do or what you’ve done. You are what Christ did for you. He loves you. You are not what you do or what you’ve done. You are what Christ did for you.

Moral people are good because they are emotionally healthy; they live vulnerable, imperfect, yet beautiful, lives rooted in a deep sense of safety.

Being secure in their identity gives them the freedom to ask for help when they need it. They do not allow their egos to get inflated when their lives bear fruit.

They are unlikely to even talk about themselves as moral or immoral. They are loved. They’ve let go of worrying about being perfect and humbly desire to do the next right thing.

They in no way allow people to dictate to them who they are, because they know who they are. You don’t need more guilt or shame. You need encouragement. You don’t need to wallow because of something in your past or because you keep messing up.

You need to hear the voice that is calling out to you, “Beloved child, don’t give up. I’m with you and I’ll never stop cheering you on. Keep reaching out for me and for others. You are wanted. You belong.” In the shakiness of living, remember one simple thing: you are not what you’ve done, and you are not what you do. You are a beloved child of God.

No one can take that from you. You didn’t earn it. You’ve never lived a day when that wasn’t true. God absolutely adores you. He was there when you breathed your first breath. He’ll be there to catch that breath when you die. You are beloved.

Not by Works

“Is God only with me so long as I don’t get too far out of line? Is that the kind of grace the Bible talked about?” Over the years, as I’ve learned the true meaning of grace,

I’ve found that my behavior became better the less worried I was about “losing my salvation.” The more I cared about being in God’s presence and worshiping him, the less I thought about sin.

Feeling safe in the idea that God wasn’t going to take away his promise of heaven actually made me more kind and less worried and transformed my mind to stop thinking about sin so much. I found the less I thought about managing sin, the less tempted I was to sin. I found the more I meditated on God’s love and blessing, the more driven I was to honor God and treat my neighbor with dignity and love.

Paul wrote about how he used to think he was made right with God by living a perfect life. He said he might have bragged about how closely he followed the law, doing everything right. After all, he was a moral pillar.

But then he said, “All of that is garbage compared to the righteousness I have by faith!” (see Phil. 3: 7–9).

Faith in what? Faith in God’s love for all humanity as exemplified in the cross and resurrection. He explained in another letter how we belong to God not because of our good deeds, but because of grace.

The Message translates these verses:

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! (Eph. 2: 7–8)

Without grace, our good works become a type of soul-killing legalism, a lifeless system of trying harder to earn the affection or approval of God and man. This system is made of saints and sinners—those who are in because of their good deeds and those who are out because they don’t follow the rules.

But grace says, “No matter who you are, trust your life to God in Christ Jesus, and he’ll get you where you need to be. Have patience in the in-between. You are God’s beloved child and he has you by the hand.”

The first step to living full of God’s energy is simply believing you are loved even when you mess up. Give yourself grace. Be kind to yourself. You are not what you do. You are not what you’ve done. You are not what has been done to you. You are the beloved, and that’s very good news. Heaven is your home.

Few people articulated this idea better than Brennan Manning. He was a priest who dedicated most of his years to a contemplative life serving the poor and prisoners—an experience that ultimately culminated in his writing his famous The Ragamuffin Gospel.

Just before his death, he gave a sermon I’ve never forgotten. He said something like:

In the forty-eight years since I was first ambushed by Jesus . . . and then literally the thousands of hours of prayer, meditation, silence, and solitude over those years, I am now utterly convinced that . . . the Lord Jesus is going to ask us one question, and only one question: “Did you believe that I loved you?” That I waited for you day after day? That I longed to hear the sound of your voice?” The real believers there will answer, “Yes, Jesus! I believed in your love, and I tried to shape my life as a response to it.” 1

THE GOSPEL OF SIN MANAGEMENT

I found the less I thought about managing sin, the less tempted I was to sin. I found the more I meditated on God’s love and blessing, the more driven I was to honor God and treat my neighbor with dignity and love.

“though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

ESV 11-3:4 Philippians

Intimacy with God

Knowing God means having a deep abiding personal friendship with God. Spiritual growth is to deepen this personal friendship with God. Holiness is based on intimacy not will power.

Confess Good Stuff

We are snared by the words of our mouths declare and decree who you are in Christ and confess what God has accomplished in your life through Jesus Christ.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

ESV 5:21 2 Corinthians

“I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

ESV John 11-10:9

YOUR PASSION DEFINES YOUR SPIRITUALITY