Finding Momentum

I think Grace is jack­ham­mer­ing into my creaky l’il reli­gious heart right now. A sim­ple word from Romans is tear­ing me apart like it hasn’t before.

8 “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, 

if you con­fess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and

believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,

you will be saved.

10 For with the heart one believes and is justified,

and with the mouth one con­fesses and is saved.

11 For the Scrip­ture says, “Every­one who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

12 For there is no dis­tinc­tion between Jew and Greek;

for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestow­ing his riches on all who call on him.

13 For “every­one who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Romans 10:8–13

And the crux of the mat­ter is that Jesus’ grace is freely acces­si­ble, demon­strat­ing his love for us (“while we were sin­ners Christ died for us”). I don’t earn it. I sim­ply believe. It’s been done, already, for two-thousand years. It’s not my ini­tia­tive, it’s his.

I’ve been oblivious–comatose, maybe–to this scan­dalous truth. I’m still out there chas­ing my own real­ity, try­ing to shape my future with my own two hands. Though exhil­i­rat­ing, it’s get­ting tiring.

And here’s the Grace and glory of it all: I am sim­ply his son. Noth­ing to prove. Adopted into the fam­ily, com­mis­sioned with a call. Nobody to com­pare myself against; noth­ing to brag about. To know that I am in Christ is enough to redi­rect my ambi­tion, calm my ner­vous anx­i­eties and free me to run.

My heart’s still creaky and old, but there are signs of life.