Every Thursday, I meet with my friend from church and we talk through what God is doing in our lives and she trains me on some material that our church is passionate about people being knowledgeable on. This morning we were talking about what she called roadblocks, but I’ve previously heard them called defeater beliefs. Defeater beliefs are the ideas that keep people from believing in the Bible, become Christians or moving forward in their faith. She asked me, “Why Christianity?” What she was really asking was — out of all the religions, spiritual practices and ways to heaven and a higher power, why am I sold on Christianity.

I responded quickly, “Grace.” I am sold out for the Christianity thing because of grace. In my 18 years of life leading up to giving my life to Christ and in the 5 years since, I have not come across another religion that is built on the idea of grace. A lot of people will admit that they are bad, fallen, not perfect, but the natural response to this “brokenness” is to simply work harder. “If I work harder, I will be able to be good enough.” “If I do enough good things, they will outweigh the bad that I’ve done.” “Come on, I’m not really that bad.” I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are just that bad. And so am I. God set such a high standard for us that we could not meet it ourselves. No amount of good works can get us there. No matter if you go to church every day for the rest of your life, you’re not getting to heaven on your accord. Sounds pretty depressing, right?

Well, until grace comes onto the scene in the form of Jesus Christ.He lived the perfect life, rebelling against the religious leaders of His time, dying a brutal death on the cross. By living the perfect life, Jesus is able to pay the penalty for our sins. All of our sins are paid for, so there’s no need to work ourselves to death trying to make up for our shortcomings. Instead, because of grace, we can spend our lives living in gratitude to the one who paid the price. I’ve put all my eggs in the Christianity basket, I’ve built my life on the promises of the Bible, because of grace. I don’t trust myself to get there on my own, thankfully God made a way. That’s the only thing that makes sense for me — grace.