I am a people pleaser by nature. As a child, obedience came easy because I longed to please my parents and teachers. As I grew older, I internalized this desire to please in my relationship with God. I believed God loved me, but I also came to believe lies that I had to obey Him and do what was right in order to keep Him happy with me. Don’t get me wrong, I was taught grace and that salvation is a free gift we receive by faith, but my natural drive to please, along with a bit of perfectionism, warped how I began to approach God. 

As I grew older and went away to college, I was unaware of just how much I had taken on a “legalistic” mentality. I saw many friends walk away from the faith and struggle with what they had always been taught as Christians. Yet, I held fast. I stayed the course. I loved Jesus with all my heart, but soon, suffering came knocking on my door, and it revealed something inside of me I did not know was there. I began crying out to God, “I’ve followed you my whole life. I don’t deserve this. I’ve obeyed you and done all the right things!” 

In my brokenness, the Holy Spirit led me to Isaiah 64:6, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…” I knew the verse. I’d heard it my whole life, but suddenly it applied to me. Every thing I had ever done in my own strength to please God or earn His favor was as a filthy rag in His sight. Grace has a way of leveling the playing field. I realized that any good thing God gave to me was based solely on His grace through Jesus Christ, and any suffering I was experiencing was not necessarily because I had “done anything wrong.”

When we come to truly understand our identity in Christ, obedience is no longer a means of earning God’s favor, but a natural outflow of our love for a Father who loves us and gives us His righteousness freely.