Why Mornings?60And self- discipline. And hard work. Just try harder! But we
also need a massive amount of grace. Not excuses, but grace.
See, the beauty of what we’ve learned so far is that we don’t
need all that much willpower, self- discipline, or hard work.
We really just need a simple plan and the flexibility to figure
out what works for us.
Grace comes in when life doesn’t follow our plan. When
we get sick, when we’re traveling, or we just don’t want to, and
we don’t. We don’t get up. We don’t read. We don’t pray. We
don’t plan anything except to eat a box of doughnuts.
And then comes the guilt.
Now, guilt can be a good thing. It’s a trigger to remind us
that we aren’t doing what we value. But triggers are tempo-
rary. They exist to remind but not to remain.
If we don’t follow guilt with grace, we give up, we get
stuck, we wallow, and it leads to a downward spiral. So why,
then, is grace so hard in the face of guilt? Somehow it feels
wrong. It feels as if we should be hard on ourselves, as if we
don’t deserve grace. As if grace is unnatural.
That’s because it is. It is supernatural. It is what God wants
to give us. The more we practice receiving grace, the more free-
dom we have to walk in relationship with God.
We can follow the formula: guilt + grace = growth. Let’s
allow our guilt to trigger a reminder that we are not living the
way we value and then accept the grace that God offers to us
so we can move forward in freedom (as opposed to giving up).
Then we experience true growth.
Not only is grace a biblical principle, it’s also scientifically
proven to move you forward and to actually help you make
better decisions. In 2007, the now famous “Doughnut Study”