3 Reasons Why You're Scared to Accept Grace

Humans love control. We love to control the temperature in our home. We love to control what goes into our coffee each morning. We wish we could control the weather, the economy, and everyone around us.

Control keeps us safe. Or at least, the illusion of control gives us the illusion of safety. We feel like as long as we are at the helm, the ship of our lives will go in the direction we want it to, and we will get everything we need.

But we can’t control grace. We can’t control God. We can’t force him to give us this gift of unmerited favor. We can’t influence his decision to love us or not. He is God, and we are not. And that, in some ways, is terrifying.

Imagine being a little baby who is desperate for his mother’s milk. He cries, he wails, he twists and turns in his crib, but he can’t make his mom come to him.

That’s where we are. Even if we feel like we can control our jobs, our appearance, our friendships, our health, etc.--we would still fall flat on our faces trying to control our eternal fate.

The good news is that we don’t need to make God give us unmerited favor. He is the attentive, gentle, doting mother who provides for his children every time they cry out. He freely chooses to show us favor and then does us the added kindness of PROMISING that he will.

He tells Moses in Exodus 33:19, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”

And Hebrews 4:16 encourages us, “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

It can be so scary to depend on God’s goodness instead of our own. But the Bible makes it more than clear that God’s grace will be there to catch us.

How to move through this fear: Think about all of the good things in your life that you do not have control over. For instance, you don’t control how much oxygen there is to breathe. You don’t control how much sunshine there is, which grows plants which in turn provides food and shelter for you. You don’t control your friends that love you despite all of the silly arguments you’ve gotten into.

See in each one of these things how much God is taking care of you already. And extend this confidence to grace, and approach his throne with your head held high and your heart at peace, knowing that you will find mercy in your time of need.

Have you ever received good news, and your first instinct was to not believe it? You get a promotion, but you make sure to read that email twice. Your wife tells you she’s pregnant, and your first words are, “You’re joking!”

We do this because we’re attempting to shield ourselves from the pain of disappointment. A disappointment that we, unfortunately, know all too well–usually from deep within our childhood.

Our parents and caregivers aren’t perfect, and as adults, we intellectually accept that. But as kids, we couldn't help but feel the pain of betrayal and abandonment when our parents and caregivers missed the mark on caring for us perfectly.

It could be as simple as your father working overtime to provide for your family, but he missed your soccer game, and you never got over that. Or it could be as extreme as total abuse or abandonment.

Either way, these scars make it so hard for us to believe that God really, truly, actually, definitively loves us without condition.

If we hope for this love–this love that we need more than anything in this world–and we’re let down, well, that’s something we couldn’t recover from. So it’s easier not to hope.

But I would encourage you, friend, to hope for this grace, and hope for it some more, because it is beyond our wildest dreams.

How to move through this fear: Ask yourself, if God’s grace isn’t true, what is the worst part about that? And once you have identified that worst fear (I’ll be unloved, I’ll be alone, I’ll be punished), follow that root back to your developing years. Who or what situation has made you feel that fear in the past?

And then study how God is different from the imperfect love we have received in the past. Do a side-by-side analysis, and experience the joy of seeing how perfectly safe it is to accept God’s unconditional love for you.

Once you have sat with, processed, and moved through these fears about accepting grace, experiencing it more fully than you ever have is just around the corner.

Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/AaronAmat 

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

Kelly-Jayne McGlynn is a former editor at Crosswalk.com. She sees the act of expression, whether through writing or art, as a way to co-create with God and experience him deeper. Check out her handmade earrings on Instagram and her website for more of her thoughts on connecting with God through creative endeavors.