Don’t be hard on you

Introduction 

Have you ever had a list of things to do and achieve, finding that after a few years you’re probably worse off than when you started?

Sometimes we are so hard on ourselves that we get angry or judge ourselves every time we wind down and relaxing seems like some sort of sin. 

This may be a sign of us not showing or giving ourselves grace, and not giving ourselves grace may be a sign of us not having received God’s grace. 

In this post, we will be defining what grace is in the Bible and how it may affect our livelihood including our character or personality, not only toward others but also ourselves.

What is Grace?

Grace is the ability to look beyond the deed and see the person for who they are. 

It’s a gift given to us by God through faith in Christ, where He sees who we are and not what we’ve done.

A misconception about Grace

Having and experiencing grace doesn’t mean that we are cleared from experiencing the consequences of our actions.

My story

There have been times when I’ve been very hard on myself, not giving myself time to rest, being busy with one thing and on to another. All of which were supposed to ‘increase’ my level of productivity.

I learnt how being busy doesn’t necessarily equal productivity and distraction doesn’t necessarily mean relaxation either.

In my quest to get Atusaye Boutique up and running, I thought that relaxing was a sign of quitting, that if I rested I wouldn’t get anywhere with the brand and when I got tired, I couldn’t rest, I just got more and more tired with making more plans to get the brand up and running. 

I treated myself like a robot, not worthy and not having achieved enough to rest and not worry. I had no grace for self.

What happened next?

After having watched sermon after sermon, concentrating on my relationship with Jesus, I began questioning why I was still too tired, why I couldn’t relax, why I was busy even though I had paused on working on Atusaye Boutique and other things. 

Even though I switched my concentration toward my relationship with Jesus; subconsciously I remained in other things because I was not where I wanted to be. 

Look, it took me long to get to the point of discovering where I was and why I struggled to relax. I’ve always been taught to get things done before resting and that I couldn’t rest before making good progress.

What’s the point?

Unfortunately, that teaching also bled into my relationship with Jesus where I thought and believed to receive grace I had to get things ticked off of my checklist. I had to behave, I had to pray, I had to listen to sermons, I had to devote time to Jesus and if I didn’t do these things, I was not worthy to be a child of God. 

All this affected my livelihood and personality not only towards myself but to others. How can I be graceful to others if I’m not graceful to myself?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we shouldn’t pray or spend time with Jesus, I’m saying that we shouldn’t think that doing equates grace. 

What may happen when we don’t give ourselves grace

The deficit of receiving grace in our lives may indicate that we don’t need help. 

It may induce feelings of unworthiness when we don’t manage to tick off something on our to do list. 

It may cause exhaustion in trying to keep up with progress and excellence 

Most of all, it may indicate our lack of receiving grace through faith in Christ and how we’re inadvertently saying to God that Jesus’ sacrifice was for nothing. 

So what equates grace?

“God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”

‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭2‬:‭8‬-‭9‬ ‭NLT‬‬

What the verse means to me.

Grace:

1. Is received by believing in Jesus Christ
2. Cannot be earned 
3. Forms part of salvation 
4. Is a gift
5. Means looking beyond our shortcomings 
6. Defines us
7. Is there and needs to be accepted
8. Is free

Tips on how you may be gracious to yourself

1. Rest – There’s no point in working if you feel exhausted, chances are you won’t be able to concentrate
2. Start again – If you feel stuck, we have every right to begin again, the second time may be taking you in a different direction than where you intended to go
3. Allow yourself to make mistakes – Mistakes don’t define our process, where we end up does
4. Do it, and work on it – Post what you need to post, write what you need to write, improvement may only happen on the way, it may not look good for you, but it may look great to someone else

Resolution: How would you define grace to be in your life and what are some ways you practice giving yourself grace?

Conclusion

We can lose out on being gentle on us due to the pressure we put on ourselves or due to bad teaching. 

What’s awesome is that in grace through faith, we are able to understand that our efforts don’t earn us grace, we have to receive it.

Therefore, we need to gives ourselves grace, whether we feel we have earned it or not, it’s still there for us to experience.