His grace is our glue

Personal photo: Taken by Shannon Deppen

Ah this weekend is the last final breath of summer, when we all get outside and enjoy the sunshine before Fall comes back into our lives. I hope you are enjoying your Labor Day weekend and I appreciate the time you are taking to read this article today! Labor Day always marked the beginning of Autumn, but it was not always because it got cooler outside right away. Lots of other things marked Fall; Football is starting up, Halloween is approaching, and school is starting. School in particular, was the biggest marker of the end of summer, at least for me. It is something that I personally always dreaded. School brought with it so much judgement from peers, the pressure from teachers, the time away from my loved ones, and demanded things from me that felt unnatural and unpleasant. When it comes down to it, I think we can all relate to understanding the pressure I am talking about with school, even if you were someone who enjoyed classes starting back up. However, the pressure that comes along with school starting, is the same kind of pressure that I found follows us into normal everyday life, in and out of school.

Regardless of what stage of life you are in, it can be easy to find day-to-day situations charged with the pressures to do better, to measure up, and to work harder. I began the article with school, because I really think this was all of our first time really feeling pressure. We have due dates, homework, time schedules, peers, teachers with authority, and so on. However, I want to expand the horizon and consider the pressures we feel in school and in our lives outside of the classroom. Think about it; We live in a dog-eat-dog career environment, we compete in school competitions, college applications, and sports, we consume hours of advertisements and content produced to make us feel as though we are not enough as we are, and we are constantly in contact with other people that have differing viewpoints and expectations than we do. The truth is that having pressure on us is part of being human. It is part of living in this world. And while pressure can often help us perform better, push ourselves to reach our goals, and help us learn more about what we are capable of, it is also very true that there is a balance when it comes to pressure. Not enough pressure can lead to complacency and arrogance; Too much pressure can make us stress out over every detail, overthink the benign, and can push us past our breaking point. The latter is what I am trying to focus in on today. I want to consider how utterly difficult it is as Christians to find a balance when it comes to pressure.

I think inherently when we welcome Christ into our hearts, we are aware that we are undeserving of His love, unable to measure up, and cannot beat sin without Him. Because we know these things, because we know that we are made of sinful flesh and will continue to mess up, make mistakes, and let Him down, it can be really disheartening for us. It feels sometimes like we are chasing our tail and we can grow weary of never being enough. When this happens it is important to remember that "For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace (Romans 6:14)" We are going to make mistakes, we are going to fail, and we are going to need God's grace and mercy to save us from ourselves. And while we might have this in the backs of our minds, it can be easy to succumb to the doubt that the devil plants in us and we find that the pressure that this world puts on us can overwhelm us, drown our flames and enthusiasm for Christ, and replace it with an anxiousness that makes us unable to function. It is exhausting, right? The most debilitating part of pressure is the exhaustion. What can we do when we are exhausted? Nothing. We can do nothing. I am going to take it one step further and say that we are most likely to crumble under the pressure when we are exhausted. The pressure of life is something that we can all agree does not go away. The only thing that changes is how we handle the pressure, how we wake up and respond each day and how we navigate it.

When I think about the feeling of not being enough, I then find myself wondering how much of all the pressure we encounter is from the outside and how much of it is the devil using us against ourselves. It is a handy way to render us so exhausted that we cannot do any work for Christ. It is also a way to reduce the chances we have to handle the pressure better before we crumble and break down. However, now that we have established how pressure functions in our lives and how it can be a hinderance to our relationship with God, I want to look at how we can handle the pressure better, respond with a vigorous energy, and navigate life's fluent pressure in stride. The truth is that our awareness of not being good enough is valid, but we so often fail to recognize that when we abandon our own self-pity and the pressure we put on ourselves to not mess up, we can clearly see that God has already saved us, already bestowed upon us His grace, and through Him we can find strength within ourselves. Instead of it being in the backs of our minds, we can keep it in the forefront. 2 Corinthians 12:9 tells us "And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me." In this way, we can see how we do not need to be disheartened by our weaknesses and shortcomings, but rather see them as opportunities for the Lord to work within us and harbor His power and light in us.

I entitled this article 'His grace is our glue" because without God, we are weak, we are unable to stand up to the pressure, and we are sure to crumble. However, His grace holds us together, makes us unbreakable, and strengthens us with an unearthly bond that makes us His child and His warrior. We are reminded in 2 Timothy 1:9 about "Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity." When we find ourselves exhausted and tired of the pressure, burnt out from all that is expected from us and all we encounter every day, we can feel ourselves beginning to crack. It is at this time that we need to remind ourselves His grace has already defeated the attempts to make us crack under the pressure. We just need to see it, we need to embrace that grace, and we need to use it as armor against the devil and this world. He strengthens us, He guides us, and if we can go to sleep every night knowing we did our very best for Jesus, then we can be at peace. We are not perfect and God knows this. We might not be enough, but God's grace is always enough to save us, to encourage us, and to grow power within us.

Today, I went to HomeGoods and while I usually shop with my mom, she could not go with me so I went by myself, while Clay was working. Mom wanted me to pick something out for our new house, so I was having fun looking at all the fall decor and clearance summer items. During my walk down one of the aisles, I found in the back corner of the shelf a beautiful black swan. It caught my eye and I picked it up immediately and looked at it for a while before putting it in my cart. When I got home, I looked up the symbolism of a black swan. There were a few different interpretations and here they are: The black swan signifies an insight about yourself that changes your position from victim to victor; The black swan is highly symbolic of a high level of personal power because the black swan is more likely to persist than the white swan; The black swan is hugely symbolic of anything rare in our culture and is closely connected to someone who 'goes against the grain' of our culture (symbolismandmetaphor.com). I had already known that I wanted to write about how God is our strength and how He keeps us together when the pressures of this world try to tear us apart, but when I found the black swan today, it only made me relate to the concept even more. It instantly became a treasure, and it currently sits on my desk beside me while I write this.

We are not victims when we have Christ living in us, but instead we are victors because His grace strengthens, renews, and shields us from all the evil in this world. The devil cannot conquer us, cannot shatter us, cannot exhaust us to the point of being stagnant when we face the world with God on our side. God keeps that fire in us alive, continues to love us through our hard times, and turns our stumbling blocks into stepping stones. God's grace makes us black swans in this world. We can realize the power we have through Jesus's grace and can use that power to protect us from spiritual exhaustion and to guide us through the pressures we face as we navigate life's steps. No, the pressure might not go away, but we can adopt the fact that with God, we can do anything. It is true that we are not good enough to save ourselves, but we can understand that God knows this too and sent His only beloved son to pay for our shortcomings. John 3:16 comes to mind: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." It is God's grace that saves us. We all have weaknesses but having them does not mean we should cater to them. Instead, He uses our weaknesses as places for Him to occupy more space and strengthen us with the gift of His grace.

When we remember our inability to measure up, we can replace our own failing attempts with the overpowering success of the grace of God. Romans 11:26 reminds us "But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace." God's grace saves us every single day and because of this, we can focus on handling the pressures of life with His grace. When God lives in us and strengthens us when we feel as though we are going to shatter under the pressure, we become black swans in this world. We become strong, we become victors, and we can face the pressures, judgements, attacks, uncertainties, and all else with the confidence that God will see us through. He will not abandon us, but instead He will only encourage us to wear the Armor of God every day and strive to grow our confidence in Him, our power in Him, our faith in Him. With Him, we are indestructible and no attack from the devil, no mounting pressure in this life, and no uncertainty or fear can overpower the grace that God has gifted us.