NoMoreDeadlyDoing – Learning to live by grace, not striving.

Tag: grace

  • The Cost of Love

    We talk about love as if it should come naturally, but without understanding what it really is—how it’s given, how it’s received, and the reality that it always has a cost—we often end up mistaking lesser things for love. Emotions, desire, or attachment can easily masquerade as love, but Christian love is something far deeper and far more costly.

    The clearest picture of love is the Cross.

    The Cross was not simply a symbolic price—it was a punishment. One that we deserved. Yet Jesus chose to take it upon Himself, not out of obligation, but out of a love that did not flinch at the cost. That love was not free. It demanded everything. And He considered us worth the highest price a life could pay.

    Jesus taught us to “give Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” but He also revealed a deeper truth: we belong to Him. Not because He forced Himself upon us, but because He bought us—through suffering beyond imagination, through a death that should have been ours. Love, for Jesus, was not sentimental. It was obedience, blood, rejection, breathlessness, and a willingness to endure.

    This reveals something about love in our own lives.

    Love will always require something of us. Sometimes its cost appears in small, quiet acts of faithfulness:

    • letting go of resentment to forgive,
    • getting up with a child when we are exhausted,
    • choosing compassion over convenience,
    • helping someone when it would be easier not to.

    These sacrifices pale in comparison to the Cross, and on our own, we could never consistently offer them. We are too weak, too wounded, too self-centered. That is why Jesus not only redeemed us—He also gave us the Holy Spirit, the very love of God living within us, enabling what we could never do alone.

    God continues to love us, moment by moment, so that we can learn to love as He loves.

    Love is costly. But the One who paid the ultimate price walks each step with us, shaping us into people who love because He first loved us—and still does.

  • The Small Deaths

    Each breath will mirror the last,
    exhaled into nothing—
    into death like the past,
    sacrificed to become
    what alone could last.

    And many more to come—
    little last gasps for air,
    for control.
    They sacrifice every care—
    leeches of life
    that cling to the soul.
    They take until
    they swallow me whole.

    They follow me everywhere;
    I run away,
    yet still find them there.

    What falls away
    was never fit for the task.
    And good riddance—be gone,
    you lingered far too long,
    stealing my focus
    from the important tasks.
    For what now is right,
    you would have kept wrong.
    So I surrendered my fight
    for a worship song.

    Search my heart,
    and remove what doesn’t serve You.
    Tear it away—
    run a spear straight through.
    Do not leave behind
    what cannot be reproved,
    nor anything that keeps
    me from what
    You’d call me to do.

    When my eyes close
    for the final rest,
    may my life return
    to Your precious breath.
    When my soul departs,
    may all the small deaths
    that came before
    have prepared me
    to praise You more—

    to strive after holiness,
    as only You can be;
    to be raised up,
    and to know You
    as the waves
    know the sea;

    to be made whole,
    now and for eternity.

  • All of These Treasures

    All of these treasures
    buried with me in the tomb
    gave way to robbers,
    leaving only rotten fumes.

    The hoarded delight
    once stole my might,
    and traded it for wisdom
    seen only in hindsight.

    Oh, what a wretched man
    I have been.
    Oh, that I found
    delight in my sin.

    Is this heart too
    late to mend?
    Or can the bruises
    further rend—
    pulling apart
    the poison
    from the heart?

    I stand above
    these empty things—
    and this is what I fought?

    My hands were full
    of useless glitter,
    and while I filled them,
    my soul did wither.

    Like the garden,
    the snake still slithers,
    and I listened
    to his whispers.

    But now the heel
    has crushed the head.
    I am alive,
    though I was dead.

    I see I made my bed,
    surrounded by
    all of these shiny things.
    Yet still You gave me another,
    and removed the pain—
    for now I lose the world,
    and count it as gain.

    The eyes deceive
    based on what
    the heart desires.
    Though they seem harmless,
    many pretty things
    lead to fire.

    My own faculties conspired
    against my soul,
    but surrender
    to my Savior
    was the only thing
    that made me whole.

    And now He gives
    many beautiful treasures—
    but none of them
    are meant to be the goal.
    No, that is left
    for only His glory to behold:
    to seek only Him
    in all things—
    I’ll no longer buy
    the lie they sold.

  • The Sickness Within: Self-Reliance

    There’s a sickness
    that lives inside.
    It doesn’t only want
    to gain wisdom,
    but to be
    known as wise—
    the quiet defilement
    of humility denied.

    I catch myself
    on the edge
    of this descent
    far too often.
    By some miracle,
    I pray my awareness softens
    what I deserve—
    and after repentance,
    that it does not return.

    Yet here I am again,
    holding hands with pride
    as if it were my friend,
    wounding my true companions.
    For they could see
    that I made myself a fool.
    I opened my mouth,
    though my eyes
    were covered with wool.

    The blood rushed
    to my head,
    and instead of pride,
    anger erupted in its stead.
    Is this innate,
    or simply what I’ve fed?
    Is it too late,
    or have I made my bed?

    No—this cannot be true.
    Because though I slip,
    I return to You.
    Though my words defile,
    You still renew.
    The shame of the past
    glorifies the sanctified present.
    Sin rose ten times,
    but my knee bent eleven.

    My flaws reveal
    what You refine;
    the fire is quenched
    by Bread and Wine,
    the Word and Spirit intertwined—
    and quickly they remind
    that I was never created equal
    to the Divine.

    And through my weakness
    is how I find
    that the need for salvation
    required seeing the fault
    to which my will inclined.
    And though I see it again,
    I know now—willpower
    is not a friend.

    For only refuge
    in my High Tower
    removes the cancer
    and brings
    my miserable self-reliance
    to an end.

  • Monsters I Forgot

    When I was young,
    I believed in monsters.
    As I grew older,
    I left those fables behind.
    I lived in misery for many years,
    and only in hindsight did I find—
    I stopped fearing the monsters in my closet,
    the ones beneath the bed,
    the ones that come in the night—
    but I forgot the ones in my head.

    In my ignorance,
    I did their bidding—
    the fears and desires
    that traded lies
    for what is true.
    The real reason
    they tortured me so
    is that the One I truly forgot
    was You.

    When I was young,
    I might have been
    wiser than I knew.
    I feared the dark
    as if it’s where evil grew.
    There are monsters—
    and they unwittingly
    shaped me into one
    trying to survive,
    while denying why
    the nails
    were driven through.