Prayer For LifeSample

DAY FOUR: Legalism vs. Grace

I was four years into full-time ministry. My son, Jason, was barely a teenager, Jared was knocking on the door of his teen years, and my daughter, Kate, had yet to celebrate her first decade on earth. I was driven to get up at 5:30 in the morning and do our devotions together.

I experienced a season of Christianity based on works. To be clear, I was preaching a gospel of grace in those early years. But mine was a message of grace coupled with human effort. My attitude and the mandate I made for my family was that we were going to doggedly serve God.

I could never enjoy myself. If I went to a summer fair, I would feel weighted down by a burden to save people. “How can I enjoy myself,” I would think, “while people all around me are lost and going to hell?”

My kids loved me as their father, but they resented the life I was forcing them to lead. One day, when we were preparing to go to a social event, one of my children said, “Dad, please stay home. Everywhere we go, you just ruin it for us.”

I can see so clearly now that my dogged Christianity was nauseating. If I had the chance to raise my children again, it would be a very different life for them. But I didn’t come into a covenant understanding of the joy of the Lord until I was thirty-seven years old. I was saved at the age of twenty-four and wouldn’t fully understand grace for thirteen years.

The Christianity I forced on my family was unattractive—well-intentioned, but foolish. I received full covenant when I broke down and couldn’t do it anymore in my own strength. When that happened, I finally realized that I could only go forward by grace.