Episode 007: The Orchard in Your Heart

What if the greatest obstacle to godliness isn't a lack of effort—but a misunderstanding of who you are? In this episode, Jess explores why so many believers feel trapped in cycles of striving, self-improvement, and never feeling good enough. Through Scripture, personal stories, and a fresh look at grace, discover why goodness is not something you manufacture but something Christ produces in you. If you've ever wondered how grace actually changes everyday life, this episode is for you.

Show Notes:

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Email: jess@renegadegrace.com

Website: renegadegrace.com 

Verses Referenced in Today’s Episode: 2 Corinthians 3:17; 2 Corinthians 3:4–6; Ephesians 1:3–8; Ephesians 1:11–14; Ephesians 2:4–10; Ephesians 2:13; Ephesians 3:16–19; Ephesians 3:20–21; Ephesians 4:22–24; Ephesians 5:1–2; Ephesians 5:8; Romans 6:23; Ephesians 2:8–9; Romans 8:32; James 1:17; Romans 12:6–8; 1 Corinthians 12; 1 Peter 4:10; Galatians 5:19–23; Matthew 7:17–18; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 5:9; Philippians 2:12–13; Isaiah 64:6; Titus 2:11–12; Romans 12:2; Colossians 3:2–3; Colossians 3:9–10; 2 Peter 1:9–10; James 1:23–25; 2 Corinthians 12:9

 Listener Reflection Questions:

• Where do you most often feel like you're not enough?
• Have you been living from grace or from self-improvement?
• What would change if you truly believed Christ's goodness lives in you?
• Are there places where you've confused works with fruit?
• What truth about your identity do you need to remember this week?

Transcript

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Have you ever felt like you're just not enough? What if the thing you're trying hardest to become is something God already says you are? Why do so many Christians feel exhausted if Jesus said he came to bring us rest? What if grace wasn't just God's plan for your salvation, but also his plan for your growth? We're getting a little bit more vulnerable and personal today in today's episode, so maybe I'm the one who needs to buckle up buttercup. Welcome back to the Renegade Grace Podcast. I am your local Grace Radical, Jess, and today we are finishing up our Relearning the Gospel series. I can't believe we're here at the end of our series. It's exciting, also a little sad to be finishing up the series. I just want to do a quick recap kind of over what we've learned so far in our series. So, first of all, we learned that we are under a new covenant. That's the covenant of grace. We have finished forgiveness. That's what once for all means. We have a new nature. That's what born again means. We're completely close to God because we're united with Christ. And finally, our last episode, we learned that we live in dependence on Christ because, much like Obi-Wan Kenobi, he's our only hope. As I said in our last episode, we are kind of ending our series here talking about what it looks like to take everything we've learned about who God is and who we are and apply that to our everyday. So in our last episode, we focused on what it looks like to depend on God for our goodness rather than trying to produce it ourselves. In there, we talked a lot about faith in Christ as our source and that grace is not opposed to effort, but rather to earning. And that it's really about the order that you place the good works in. They come after receiving from God, not as an attempt to earn something from Him. As a result, not a requirement. And today I want to continue kind of expanding on those truths in our final episode of the series. My first real awakening to the radicality of God's grace came through a short Bible verse. It wasn't a verse about grace directly, nor was it about salvation or forgiveness, righteousness, any of those big theology concepts. In fact, it was a very simple verse about a very simple thing, freedom. I was fairly early on in my sobriety journey and had started seeing a therapist in an attempt to kind of work through some of my really deep-seated self-hatred and woundedness. You know, if you remove the substance that you've been using to dull the pain, suddenly you have to like deal with said pain. Funny how that works, huh? Well, I was in a session with her and I went on a tirade about how God was mean and controlling and angry, and definitely didn't like me very much. The controlling and mean part was a particular pain point for me personally. I really hate being controlled or feeling manipulated in any way. So the idea that God was controlling and manipulative was a big deal to me. And in response to this, she pointed me to a verse. Freedom with God? Surely not. I never heard about God being about freedom. Control, rules, expectation, demands, sure. But freedom? Yeah, right. I was pretty sure that verse wasn't in my Bible. I thought I was pretty well educated in scripture, and so the fact that I'd never heard this verse was troubling to me. I was so convinced that she had made it up, and it wasn't in my Bible, that I actually went back home to my apartment and dug out my Bible from childhood and I looked it up just to confirm my suspicions. Guess what? That verse was in my Bible, too. And it wrecked me a little bit in the best way, because it opened the door to the possibility that maybe I didn't know as much as I thought I did about God. Maybe I'd been wrong this whole time. And if I was wrong about him, maybe I was also wrong about what he wanted from me. Don't get me wrong. I had heard about certain things from God being free, just not about me being free. Salvation was a free gift, but working out your salvation was to be done with fear and trembling on a narrow road, surrounded by fences of expectation, topped with the coiled barbed wire of God's punishment, should you try to scale them. So then, though they never said it so plainly, how you became a Christian and how you maintained your Christianity were two very different things. That's religion's great bait and switch, as I like to call it. Almost everyone these days has a smartphone of some kind. I'm personally Apple over Android any day. I'm sorry, I do believe in grace and I believe that the cross worked. But if you are in the group chat and you turn the bubbles green, I'm not sure you're forgiven for that. Okay, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. So I'm an Apple girl. My iPhone is pretty much glued to my side at all times. It's my camera and my phone and my library and my computer, even my flashlight. I mean, it does everything. And for the things it doesn't do, there's an app for that, right? But some apps are tricky. For instance, I wanted to play a certain game, so I searched it up in the app store, and lucky for me, free game, right? Free download. Yay, love that. So I start playing it, and of course, the addict in me kicks in and I get sucked in and spend hours upon hours determined to beat the game. I'm a completionist. It's a problem, it's fine, I'm working through it. Finally, after my hours of commitment to this, banners wave, confetti flies, I do my victory dance. But as the confetti clears, I read very concerning words. To complete the game, buy the full version for only $199. What? No, I thought this was a free game. That's not fair. Is a clever marketing ploy, enticing me with its claim that it costs me nothing, and then after I'm caught up in the game, boom, pay up. Sadly, this doesn't stay in the digital world. We do similar things in the church as well. See, before you're a Christian, you're lured in with promises of acceptance and reassurances that Jesus loves everyone unconditionally. But then the moment you get caught up in the game, it's time to pay up. It's almost as if as soon as you come up from the water, you're met with a list of do's and don'ts, rules for becoming a better Christian. I've not yet met any Christian who would argue with me about our need for grace for salvation. See, where the church seems to get hung up is on the everyday life portion of our faith. We teach unbelievers that God loves them no matter what, there's no sin too big for God, and that relationship with Jesus is built on believing, not earning. However, we teach believers that their fellowship is in jeopardy, forgiveness requires constant asking for it with each sin, and that their closeness is dependent on how committed they are doing Christian things. So how exactly did the gospel suddenly get worse after you became a Christian? That doesn't seem right to me. But see, this is a symptom of a general sickness within the Christian church, the origin of which is a bad belief that grace is only about salvation. You know, I I think the enemy knows that he can't eliminate the truth. And so instead, he settles for the next best thing. He spams us with a bunch of alternative truths. So if he can't eliminate the truth about the fullness of grace, then he's more than happy to peddle us a lesser grace that is only good for sin forgiveness and has no actual power for everyday life. We then end up with this belief system that Jesus is for our salvation, but we opt instead for a religious effort for our moral living every day. The results, well, it's not good, joyful Christians who are behaving rightly. No, it's more like burnt out, exhausted, hopeless Christians who have become experts at hiding their sin, shame, and vulnerability. This bait and switch pay-to-play doctrine leads not to godliness, but rather to a mindset of measuring and ultimately bondage to our failure. I've watched this happen time and time again, not only in others' lives, but also in my own. As part of a teaching I did once at a women's retreat weekend, I asked women to write down their number one fear or anxiety on a card and then requested they give them to me. I did this twice with two different groups of women, all over a hundred women in each group. And so later, as I read each card given to me and prayed over them, I noticed a common theme popping up. And so it took time to separate them out and count them and do the math. And about 87% of them listed some version of, I don't think I'm good enough. All of these women, the majority, the majority of these women, all believers, by the way, felt not good enough and lived completely unaware that the woman next to them, most likely the one they're comparing themselves to, by the way, is also feeling that same way. I'm all too familiar with this particular struggle. This one, this one's personal. I've shared some of my story here in previous episodes. I grew up in hyper-religious spaces, and religion loves boxes. To say there were a lot of expectations on me would be an understatement. We had rules for everything. What to wear, how to wear it, what to say, how to say it, how to be a woman, and how to be a man. And boy oh boy, was I real terrible at fitting in that woman box that religion had curated for me. I was told to study, but I couldn't be too smart. I was told to be a disciple, but I couldn't ask too many questions. I was told to be bold by my faith, but I certainly could never be a leader in my church. Look pretty, stay quiet, keep your colors inside the lines. Stand still during worship, be sad during communion, be silent in church. The weight of expectation was suffocating and left me feeling like I was simultaneously too much and not enough at the same time. And it didn't take long for me to conclude that if a religion named after God had these expectations of me, God must also have those expectations. I'd heard stories, after all, of the wrath of God and his disdain for those who stepped outside his people's carefully drawn lines. And so I tried. I tried really hard to make myself less, to cram myself into a box that was way too small for me. I tried for a while to find success in that system that I grew up in. And look, I I was smart. Maybe too smart for my own good. I knew a million verses, I went to apologetics camp as a teenager. I was very good at arguing every memorized point, proving the religion of my ancestors. I could tell you about Jewish culture and context and tradition. And yet it seemed that I could still never be enough. Perfection was just out of reach. We live in a world that measures our worth based on our work. Our efforts, striving, doing, and performance drive our value in a world whose currency is expectation. We've allowed that mindset to invade our churches as if God works the same way that the world does. Don't we know that God's kingdom is different? We don't work to get, we receive what Christ did. We belong because Christ pulled us close. We are capable because he lives in us. Life lived out in Christ is confidence in the truth that you are enough because he is enough. You are enough because he has given you all that you need. You are enough because Dad said so. Not that we are adequate in ourselves so as to consider anything as having come from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Did you catch that? What is the source of our enoughness? Our effort, our successes, our disciplined behavior? No. The source of our adequacy is from God. So think about that. If we say of ourselves that we are not enough, then we are doubting the source of our adequacy. We are saying that God is not adequate. The verse says it comes through Christ. And so your enoughness is linked to Christ's enoughness. You can't be anything less than enough unless Christ is. That's about your everyday walk. Servants of a new covenant. How? Not by the bondage of keeping rules and laws, the letter, but by the life of the spirit in you. I I get it, okay? I do. It's hard to believe some days. It's hard for me too. I mean, I literally tattooed the word enough across my chest in very large letters, so that every morning I'm forced to look in the mirror and face the truth of who I am, because I doubt it often. But every day I get up and I have to look in the mirror and see the words enough staring back at me in big black letters across my chest. And I'm forced to believe the truth of Scripture, which is that I am enough because my enoughness is from God through Christ. Regardless of your doubt, regardless of how you feel when you wake up in the morning, the fact remains that He has made you enough. It is inked, not on your skin, on your heart, permanent and irreversible for eternity. Even when you don't believe it, he's faithful to remind you of its truth. Okay, Jess, that's cool and sounds really pretty and exciting, but what do we do about all these instructional behavioral verses that we see all over the New Testament? Well, that's a great question. I'm so glad you asked. To answer that, I am just going to remind you of what we talked about in our last episode about faith independence. If you remember, I said grace is not opposed to action, it's opposed to earning. Of course, there are things for us to do. Of course, we should behave in a way that reflects the truth of who we are in Christ. That's just common sense. It is nonsensical to behave in a way that doesn't line up with who you are. But that behavior comes after identity. It is not the determiner of identity. We behave as saints because it would make no sense to behave like a sinner, because that's not who we are. You see this in scripture, even in how the epistles themselves are written. It's very interesting to me. Almost always you see identity first, gospel first, and then behavior instruction. Let's just take Ephesians, the book of Ephesians, as an example. Ephesians chapter one, Paul starts out right off the bat with some pretty awesome identity statements. I mean, just in verses three through eight alone, he says we are blessed with every spiritual blessing, chosen, dearly loved children, fully forgiven, and lavished with grace. And that's just mentioning a few. There's there's actually more in there, even. He goes on to say that we have received an inheritance in Christ, have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, and that we are God's own possession. Now that is a whole lot of identity talk, and that's only the first half of the first chapter. Chapter two goes on, and it talks about how we are made alive in Christ. We are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, we have the boundless riches of his grace, and that we are his masterpiece and designed for good that he's already prepared for us. Paul even calls out to us Gentiles specifically, reminding us that we have been included and brought near through Christ's blood, and that we have belonging and unity with our fellow believers. He doesn't stop there, he continues on in chapter three, where he expresses his desire for us to know the vastness of God's love for us, so that we would be enlightened and strengthened by this knowledge, and that it would be a grounding and empowering force in our lives. Paul spends three whole chapters telling us who we are, who Christ is, and what he's done, and what that means for us, at the end of which he finishes with these words. Now, to him who is able to do far more abundantly, beyond what we can ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Okay, so where is the doing coming from? Him. According to what power? His. At work where? Within us. That's the transition verse. His power at work within us, which empowers us for chapters four, five, and six, which are Paul's instructions on what it looks like to live out when he has just spent the first half of the letter teaching us that we are. And by the way, if you pay attention, you'll notice that in those chapters four, five, and six, Paul continually returns to identity in connection to the behavior he's calling us to. Few examples. Chapter four, lay aside your old way of life. Put on righteousness and holiness, which comes from truth. Chapter five, you're you are a dearly loved child. So live in love just like Christ loved you. You were once a child of darkness, but you are now a child of light. Live like it. And on and on it goes, with far too many examples to fully cover here. Paul does things very similar in some of his other letters as well. I can think of Colossians as a great example, very similarly structured like this. And I think it would do us well in the church to follow in Paul's footsteps. Do stuff. Yeah. Do all kinds of good stuff. But don't do it because you're trying to get something, earn something, move closer, or be more. Do it because you're loved, strengthened, have everything that you need. And God's stirring up goodness in your heart. I want to take a little bit of time and explore something that I find super cool with some of the language that's used in scripture to talk about behavior. Four words in particular: works, wages, gifts, and fruit. For any of us who've spent a lot of time in or around Christian spaces, we've probably become very accustomed to certain words and languages. We have verses memorized, maybe we even sing little cute Sunday school songs about them. But I wonder how often do we stop and consider what the author is actually trying. Communicate with the words they use. I noticed recently that Paul uses different words in reference to behavior depending on the source of that behavior. And I think it's very clever and intentional and a contrast that he's making on purpose. So let's start in Romans. Romans 6.23. We've we've visited this verse a few times on the podcast. It says, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ our Lord. You know, there's a difference between a wage and a gift. Wages are something that you earn. Wages are what you work hard for and expend great effort for. A gift, on the other hand, is something you freely receive from somebody else. See, the only thing that we have the power to earn on our own is sin's meager wages. But God, but God being rich in all things, and none more so than love, lavishes us with the excessiveness of his very own life, a life that never ends. Wages earned through working, gift given freely. Wages sin at the source. Gift of God at the source. Does this maybe remind you of another verse? Maybe Ephesians 2. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one can boast. Paul writes elsewhere in Romans that if God did not withhold his own son, won't he freely give us all things? James writes that every good and perfect gift is from above. We learn in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 that not only does the Holy Spirit give many gifts to believers, but those gifts are varied, different, and meant to be shared with other believers. Peter echoes this in 1 Peter chapter 4. You see what I'm getting at here? When God is at the source, yes, there is action and expression, but that is simply a display of gifts that you've been given, not earned wages from your spiritual employment. All right, let's take a look at another set found in the book of Galatians. Galatians chapter 5, we'll start in verse 19. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, etc. There's a very long list. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is a pretty common verse, right? One that I've had memorized since I was a toddler, I think. Fruit of the spirit's not a coconut, right? Just me? Okay, cool. I'm sure many of you have had this verse memorized at some point, especially if you grew up in church. After the reading this verse, though, have you ever stopped to ask the question what's the difference between a work and a fruit? They're two very different words, both in English and the original Greek. They're two contrasts. See, the works of the flesh and the fruits of the spirit. A work is a behavior, usually one you have to try hard at. A fruit is a natural crop of a healthy tree. So let me ask you this. Does an apple tree have to really push hard to make apples pop up on its branches? No, apples are produced because that's what apple trees do. Same is true for us. Jesus says something about this. He says, in the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree is not able to bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree able to bear good fruit. In this passage, Jesus is illustrating that a person who is a good tree naturally produces good fruit. Now think about this. The Holy Spirit lives in us as believers, and we have been transformed at the core. That's what 2 Corinthians 5 says. We've been transformed, we're a new creation in Christ. Romans says that we become obedient from the heart. Ezekiel prophesies that in this new covenant we get a new heart for our heart of stone. So at our core, we are new. We talked about this in our new nature episode. We have a new nature in Christ. And this results in us being a good tree. And because we're a good tree, we bear good fruit, the fruit of the spirit, which comes out in our lives. Now, don't do it. I know it's tempting to reverse this verse and make it about behavior and not identity, but don't you dare do it. Don't fall for the enemy's lie that if you behave badly, you must be a bad tree. That's not what the verse says. It doesn't say if you behave badly, you're a bad tree. It says good trees bear good fruit and they can't bear bad fruit. Remember, sin has wages and flesh has works, but fruit is found as the result of identity. And your identity, child of God, is a healthy, good tree because of the work of Jesus in you. You grow good fruit. Ephesians 5 says, the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth. The fruit of the Holy Spirit in us is the natural production of goodness from our inner being. This is the source of our action and how we can live out our faith from day to day. In Philippians 2.13, it says, the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort for the sake of his good pleasure is God. In other words, not only does God give us the desire to do good, but also the ability to do it, to will, desire, and to work, effort, as some versions say. Actually, you know what? Let's stop and camp out on this verse for a minute. Because I people get hung up on this verse, okay? Well, I mean, not this verse, but the one right above it. So let's read them together, shall we? Context and such. Philippians 2, starting verse 12. So then, my dear friends, just as you've always obeyed, not only my presence, but even more in my absence, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence. For the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort for the sake of his good pleasure is God. So a lot of times we'll pull out verse 12 by itself and craft it into this like guilt weapon with which we beat Christians into trying harder and performing better. I think is heavily influenced by how certain words are translated in certain versions and the fact that we kind of rarely pay attention to the full context of the verse. It's been thrown at me multiple times in my teaching about grace. And it's usually done in the like King James version or NASB version, which is work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Fear and trembling. We need to be afraid of God, right? We pluck that out, we recite it to God's kids, as if our heavenly father is this abusive parent that we have to walk on eggshells around for fear of facing his wrath. I wonder if this was how a human parent operated, would we call him a good good father? No, I think more likely we'd call CPS. So instead of the truth of the gospel, we've settled for out of context, poorly understood, scriptural bullying, basically. You know, there's actually a comma there between verses 12 and 13. That means that Paul's actually in the middle of a sentence. So it might be just a general good idea to read both verses as one complete thought. Work out. Okay, the original Greek work out means express to its fullest and complete measure. Work out. Express to its fullest and complete measure your salvation. With on reverence. How by doing more good Christian things, through exhausting self-effort, fueled by fear? No, Paul says, God will bring forth in you both the desire and the effort. Why? For the sake of his pleasure. In other words, because he enjoys it. He enjoys creating goodness in you. He is not begrudgingly doing life with you. He doesn't give a big sigh and say, well, she couldn't do it herself, so I guess I'll get in there and fix it. No, no, he delights in your dependence on him. It is his great joy to bring forth in you both the will and the work. You have permission to enjoy it too. Listen, you can try to work by the system of this world if you want. The system of man, of earth, of mortality and limitation. It's a system that measures your goodness based on how well you do this or that, how perfectly you behave, how many failures you avoid. You can try your best, exert your greatest effort and earn those wages. But that sounds pretty exhausting to me, doesn't it? Besides that, remember what our Romans verse says? It's sin that has wages, not faith. Faith has fruit. All that energy and all that work is just sin dressed up in religious clothing. And it is worthless compared to Christ. In fact, the prophet Isaiah goes as far as to say of human-produced righteousness, that our so-called righteous acts are like a minstrel rag in God's sight. I said that once on a women's retreat weekend, that verse from Isaiah, and several ladies got upset about it. They said, Oh, chess, you can't say minstrel rag. That's offensive. Good. It should be. That's why the prophet Isaiah chose that word. It should offend you. Your self-produced, so-called righteous acts are offensive to the finished work of Christ. There is nothing you can add to what Christ has already completed. And there is certainly nothing you can produce that is better than him actively at work in your heart producing goodness in you. Do you think you can do a better job than he can? I don't. You do have another option, though. You can choose to receive the gift of grace. Freely receive the fullness of Christ's action on your behalf. Grace doesn't retire after salvation. It is the everyday empowering force for the believer. Grace keeps and satisfies all expectations. It doesn't just overlook our failures. It actually redefines us as successes. You can never be disqualified from it. And in fact, it is grace that is the only power for overcoming sin and teaching us how to live out our godliness. Well, according to Titus chapter 2, that is. Now, doesn't that sound like a much better deal? Okay, okay, okay. So what does this grace-fueled action look like then? Well, here it is. It's simply learning and growing. I know, I know, we want it to be more complicated and scholarly, but it's not. It's simple and it's slow. I say that phrase often that the gospel is slow. We want it to be fast, you know? We want a step-by-step, guaranteed completion date, easy formula to follow, a recipe. But faith is not formulaic. Fruit takes time. It doesn't just go from seed to fruit overnight. It takes time and nutrients and freedom to flourish. I like how my friend Kyle likes to say it. You don't get grass to grow by tugging on the blades. Grass grows when it's free to grow. Romans teaches us that transformation comes from the renewing of our minds. Colossians says, fix your minds on things above. Ephesians and Colossians both tell us to put on our new self. Peter instructs us to grow in grace and remember our forgiveness and calling so that we don't stumble into sin. James says that living rightly is about remembering who we are. You want something to do? Believe. Learn the truth. Know the truth. Action will naturally follow. And here's the thing: we're not the gardener. In fact, we're not even the vine. We're just the branch. Which means that we just take in the nutrients that the vine provides us. That's what grows the fruit. I've seen this play out in my own life. I used to be pretty angry most of the time. This was true growing up under legalism, but it was also true at first when I came to know Grace. The anger was just directed more at the church, at people who led me down paths of pain, at bad doctrine and theology, and at myself for having been fooled by it. The tendrils of fundamentalism were tightly entangled around my soul. And so at first, Grace just became a new flavor of the same black and white, hardline, knowledge of good and evil way of thinking that was my norm. Put simply, I became a grace legalist. Everyone must agree with me. I need to convince them where they're wrong. Grace apologetics will win them over. Yeah, no, that didn't uh work out so well for me. It certainly didn't help that God seemed to be constantly putting me in spaces, setting me at tables, and calling me to do ministry alongside people who didn't agree with me. How dare he? It was incredibly frustrating. I would grumble to him about it frequently, and he would say, Why don't you just focus on what I'm teaching you about my love for you and let me worry about them? Insert heavy sigh and eye roll here. Okay, fine. I decided to try it his way. And you know what? At some point, without me even realizing it had happened, somewhere along the way, I became less angry and more joyful, less harsh and more gentle, less afraid and more loving. The Spirit's been doing a lot of gardening in my soul since then, especially over the last several years. He's been cultivating in me a new harvest of tenacious tenderness. And the more I allow that tenderness to grow and I rest in its fruit, the less I find myself needing to fight, the less I grab for power or control, the less I'm stiff-necked and withdrawn in my relationships. The moment I stopped trying to steal strength from myself from other places was the moment that I realized I had an orchard full of trees, bearing strength fruit right at the center of my heart. I suppose that's what God meant when he said that his power is made perfect in our weakness. When I rest in his truth, from it comes a new and vibrant desire to love and serve others well. This has been especially true for me when it comes to men. I'm just gonna be real with you all, okay? I've experienced a disproportionate amount of pain in my life at the hands of men. Big boy pain, as I call it, my therapist would call it trauma, but that feels dramatic. Childhood pain, adolescent pain, adult pain. We seem to always be standing on opposite sides, me and men. And as a result of my own woundedness, I became pretty harsh towards them. I wouldn't say that I was a man hater necessarily, but I definitely didn't trust them. And I certainly assume the worst of them most of the time. This has dramatically changed in my life now. I was actually just reflecting this past week on how many men I have in my life now who are like actually my friends. In fact, their friendship and counsel and closeness I value deeply. Never before have I had so many guys around me who are truly, genuinely for me, who speak words of affirmation over me and kindness towards me. I don't really know how it happened or when it happened, but all of a sudden here we are. And I treasure each of them for who they are to me. One of them, who's only known me for a few months, said to me recently, you know, Jess, one thing I really appreciate about you is that you don't have a chip on your shoulder. And I laughed a little internally because he's not wrong. He's right. I don't. Not at this point in my life, not for a very long time, actually. But years ago, oh yeah, I carried a couple bags worth of chips on my shoulders. What changed? Well, Grace trained me in godliness. Grace grew the fruit of gentleness in me. Grace reminded me that I have everything that I need and more than enough to freely give to others. Does that mean I suddenly have no issues and I'm just misjoyful and easygoing all the time? No, absolutely not. I'm still a little extra spicy some days, okay? I'm still Jess after all. But growth has happened and joy is more present. And in fact, I would say it's my norm. And the fruit is sweet. See, we don't need religious strictness for our goodness. We have the fruit of the Holy Spirit in us, the natural production of good behavior from our inner being. Make this make sense. Okay. Why do we trust Satan to produce badness in us, but we don't trust Christ to produce goodness in us? Is Christ weaker and less effective than the enemy? The math ain't mathing, as they say these days. No, grace is actively at work in us. It brings forth our love, even for unlovable people. It creates patience in us, even amid frustrating situations. It sets our heart at peace despite the chaos of life. Grace is moving and active. It did act, it is acting, it will continue to act, always moving to the rhythms of love that beat from God's heart. And you know what? The same rhythms beat from your heart. You have a shared heart. In grace, we have everything that we need to live out the goodness that is now native to us. Just receive it and let the fruit grow organically. No additives. Well, just like that, we've officially concluded our Relearning the Gospel series. Super exciting. Love it. I've really enjoyed teaching through these foundational pillars of the gospel with you all. And I'm excited for us as we continue our journey and we take on our next series, which I'm currently calling Unveiling God. It's a series that I'm going to look at some misconceptions about God and his character and discover what his real character is. And I think this is I'm excited about this one. I'm I'm excited because this is where it started for me. I really started with who is God really? Because I believe lies about him for a really long time. So yeah, this is going to be a special series for me, Unveiling God. So I'll take a little bit of a break as I prep the series, but then we'll get back to it with a brand new, brand new series. All right. As a reminder, if you want to keep up with me in between episodes, you can check out my website, renegadegrace.com. If you want to connect with me personally, you can reach out to me via email. My email is Jess at renegadegrace.com. Pretty simple. Or you can follow me on Instagram at RenegadePastor. I post on there pretty regularly. Also, a bonus, if you follow me on Instagram, you will get to know when my hair changes color, which, you know, happens regularly. There's a link in the show notes if you're interested in buying any of my books. And as always, there's a list of all the verses that were referenced during the teaching today. I really encourage you, don't just take my word for it. Look up the scripture. There's lots of scripture that I reference, sometimes casually, sometimes fully reading the verse. So I put all the references there so that you can fact check me. There's good stuff in scripture, you know? Alrighty. Thanks for listening to Renegade Grace. I really hope to see you next time as we start our new series together. Remember, Grace already did the work. You just get to live from it. Okay, love you. Bye.