Lessons for Living from the Bible in Everyday English by Dennis Magee

We shouldn’t be obsessed over questions such as how much faith we have, the amount of progress we are making in overcoming sins, the amount of service we are doing for God, as this causes us to be focused on ourselves instead of on God. We need to rest securely in the sufficiency of Christ’s work on the Cross, and that He fulfilled perfectly everything we can’t. We are saved by God’s grace, apart from any religious acts or moral achievements on our part. There’s nothing we can do to add to or take away from our security with God once we have received Christ. He even keeps hold of us at times when our faith grows weak. We need to depend on God to help us grow in faith, overcome sins and serve Him. We need to rely totally on the fact that Christ paid everything for us, and rely on God’s help and provision in all things. We don’t need to and can’t really do anything on behalf of our salvation or living the way God wants us to on our own. Since we can’t do anything but relay on the fact that we are totally dependent on God and Christ’s work, this gives us the freedom to love others and win them over to Christ, rather than obsessing over or trying to achieve our own salvation. Trusting completely in God and in Christ’s work, loving God and others, while doing the best we can and repenting when we fail, gives us peace and underlying joy in this raging, chaotic, unpredictable world.