I’ve thought about this the last weeks. Life really offers some authentic and tangible challenges. The biggest often being myself. Discipline, focus, inner strength, significance, vision, compassion… how to conquer the important areas of life and be successful in an eternal perspective? Not just momentarily, or seemingly in the eyes of others. I also feel it is in the very struggles and wrestling with life’s realities that something genuine happens inside of me. Maybe it is the western (or universal) sickness of laziness and comfort that so often obstructs us from rising to the fight.

But there’s something even worse hindering us – our self-sufficiency. How easy it is to be sidetracked to believe we can actually make it by ourselves, and that we stand alone in the fight. Maybe that’s why many stop trying, because their experience induces them to think the battle is already lost.

Right here is where we need to bow, and humbly admit, we are in need of help from something more powerful than our own flawed determination and failing efforts. This is the good news, our almighty Father in Heaven, and our Savior Jesus Christ, has the immeasurable strength, the steadfast compassion and unceasing, oh yes, overflowing grace to fully and completely help us and change us.

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age…” Titus 2:11-12

The battle is not lost, but already won! The more we yield to God, and admit our incapacity, the more his inexhaustible grace and power will abound over and in us to mace Christ’s victory reality in us. Not through self-thrusting, but through God-trusting!

All is there, in His Word, the truth and promises that speak of this greater reality. We just need to put our faith to it. So today, in my weakness and distress, I bowed and read a couple of psalms, thankfully proclaimed the wonderful truths and promises. And my emptiness is met by his fullness.

It is my conviction, that any true and eternally significant success, has been attained by grace. Because even in the outwardly most human endeavors of great scale, whatever eternal importance or goodness could come out of it, was granted by the invisible author of this grand play we are a part of.

To live successfully is grace.