Quit Trying To Earn It and Receive God’s Love
Judah Smith and Les Parrott
7 min read ⭑
For most of my life, I (Judah) treated my relationship with Jesus like it was a high school AP class. You know, like I had to maintain a stellar GPA to be accepted. A lot of us approach our relationship with God the same way: We think it’s all about making the grade and earning good marks. We mistakenly think we have to perform at a certain level to stay in God’s good graces. Literally. We think the Creator of the cosmos is actually grading our performance and keeping score.
The truth is that God’s love isn’t dependent on our performance. We can fail the proverbial class and still receive God’s grace. No test to ace. No teacher to win over. It’s a gift. No strings attached.
Some years ago, God brought a phrase to my mind that changed me and the church where I preach. The words didn’t arrive with fanfare or fireworks. They just popped into my head while I was brushing my teeth: “Grace grows the church.”
Unsplash+
It’s not unusual for a phrase like this to come to my mind. I thought it might make for a good sermon series or maybe a book. But there was something different about this phrase. Like someone relentlessly knocking on my door, this phrase kept knocking on my brain for weeks, even months. In time, I realized it wasn’t about a sermon series. This grace-phrase was about my calling.
I kept thinking about it, praying about it, talking about it. Eventually, I realized God was calling me to lead a church where people would experience God’s life-changing grace. I saw a church where people could grow in a relationship with a loving Father who is head over heels in love with them, longing for relationship, not performance. The phrase impacted me so much that Chelsea and I named our daughter Grace. (She’s a living reminder of God’s goodness to us.)
“Grace grows the church” shaped how I saw Jesus and opened my eyes to a whole new way of doing church — one that wasn’t about buildings or slick programs but about real, authentic connection. In that process, we changed the name of our church from The City Church to Churchome. It wasn’t only a name change; it was a paradigm shift — a whole new approach to a grace-filled community.
We started gathering in homes, apartments, coffee shops and even donut shops. We developed an app so people could have Churchome in the palm of their hands. Those changes were all about God’s grace helping people experience Jesus and community in real life. Daily, not weekly.
“Grace grows the church” is a phrase that still defines what we do at Churchome. We’re a community of people convinced that the love of Jesus is the most compelling force in the universe. When grace gets hold of your soul, it changes everything.
Are You Chasing the Wind?
I (Les), along with my wife, Leslie, had just stepped onto the platform in the Rose Garden Arena in Portland, Oregon, where nearly ten thousand people had assembled for a mega marriage seminar. That night, each of the six speakers was to give a brief overview of what we would be speaking on over the next couple of days. Right before the rest of us went to the podium, our friend Gary Smalley captivated the crowd by holding up a crisp fifty-dollar bill and asking the massive audience, “Who would like this fifty-dollar bill?” Hands went up everywhere. He said, “I am going to give this fifty dollars to one of you, but first let me do this.” He proceeded to crumple up the bill. Then he asked, “Who still wants it?” The same hands went up in the air.
“Well,” he said, “what if I do this?” He let the bill fall to the ground and pressed it under his shoe, grinding it into the floor. Then he picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. “Who still wants it?” he asked. Once again, hands shot into the air.
“You’ve just learned an important lesson,” Gary said. “No matter what happens to this money, its value doesn’t change. It’s still worth fifty dollars.”
This simple demonstration reveals a profound truth. In life, we all experience moments of being crushed, dropped or dragged through the dirt — whether by our own choices or circumstances beyond our control. In those moments, we may feel unworthy, unloved or insignificant. But our worth is not defined by what happens to us. When we rest in the love of God, our value remains unshaken.
Perhaps you’ve already taken this truth to heart. Maybe you already know, deep down in your soul, that your worth is not something you have to earn. It isn’t tied to how hard you work, how you look or what you achieve. Your value is rooted in something far greater — God’s unwavering love for you.
Chances are, however, that even if you have experienced God’s love at some time, you don’t feel it all the time. Research reveals that while many of us have heard this ancient truth about our worth, most of us, most of the time, don’t incorporate it into our everyday lives. It doesn’t really make a difference. We hear the message (God loves me). We agree with it. And that’s that. But instead of being confident of God’s love — feeling it resonate deep within our bones every day — we fall back into the habit of trying to earn it. Even if we agree that our Creator loves us, we still end up feeling better about ourselves only when we are winning the attention and approval of others.
“As French philosopher Blaise Pascal said, there is a ‘God-shaped vacuum’ in the heart of each of us. And until we fill that vacuum with God’s love — until we feel it deep in our being — our sense of worth and significance is elusive.”
We seem to be on a cosmic quest to establish our value — to prove it, earn it, deserve it — so we can somehow experience the ultimate feeling of lovability. And once we find what we’re looking for, we relax — but only momentarily. Eventually, the people we are pleasing — whether a parent, a spouse, a friend, an advisory board, or an audience — quit sending us “love messages.” Ultimately, we find ourselves back on our endless quest.
Finding the love of your life, for example, is an incredible experience, but it will not ultimately quench your thirst for unconditional love. Neither will having children, as miraculous as that experience is. And neither will becoming famous, writing a bestseller or building a successful company. Still, we run helter-skelter, always restless, desperate to find that next person, thing or event that will satisfy our search. No wonder so many of us can identify with King Solomon’s words: “Everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
It doesn’t have to be that way.
God’s Love Is Received, Not Achieved
God’s love is received, not achieved. Read that again. You’ve likely heard it before. But let it really sink in. Don’t let the sound of the rhyme discount its profundity. If you don’t get this message — if it doesn’t permeate your brain’s cortex — you’ll be forever seduced by a vapid cycle that will surely leave you running in circles. Why? Because without this simple but profound message getting deep into your internal dialogue, you’ll continually chase success, popularity or power. Those things themselves aren’t wrong. It’s just that if you’re not operating from a base of God’s unearned love, your achievements will cause you to believe that whatever love has come your way is the result of what you do, not who you are.
The consequence? Eventually, it’s guilt, insecurity, anxiety, depression, people-pleasing, entitlement. Once more, you’ll encounter a barrage of familiar and toxic inner voices. Which is exactly why this is so important. If you don’t get a lock on God’s grace-gift of love, you’ll inevitably find yourself back where you started. Only this time, little voices will conspire to keep you feeling more anxious, more insecure, more guilt-prone, more entitled. Why? Because no matter how good you might feel about yourself in any given moment, you are only a whisper away from feeling worthless. When your work is criticized, your sense of value will be directly affected. When you’re left alone or abandoned, you’ll see such situations as evidence of your unlovability. Instead of trying to understand your limitations when you fall short, you’ll blame yourself, ironically, not for what you did but for who you are.
The solution is found in not believing everything you think. It’s found, once more, in that single most important conversation you ever have: your self-talk.
What Earning Credit with God Sounds Like
You know the promotional emails from J.Crew or Whole Foods? At the top in bold letters, the message says “Our Gift to You.” But when you read further, it says something like “Earn Double Coupon Dollars.” The subject line said it was a gift. Turns out you have to earn the “gift.” That’s not a mere marketing trick. It’s a mind game we play on ourselves whenever we buy the ultimate toxic thought:
God’s love is something you earn.
This misbelief is particularly tricky because, unless you’re struggling with a serious failure or a very dark season, your self-talk does not sound like this:
I’m not worthy of God’s love.
God is displeased with me.
These extreme self-punitive statements are typically reserved for a major moral failure, such as infidelity. More than likely, your everyday self-talk sounds more “acceptable,” more reasoned, but unabashedly conditional. Your thoughts may sound similar to these:
Nothing can separate me from God’s love . . . if I don’t mess up.
God is love . . . if I’m good.
God’s grace is sufficient . . . as long as I deserve it.
God’s love is freely given . . . if I follow all the rules.
It doesn’t matter if you’re married or single, young or old, shy or assertive; if you’re hanging God’s love on a condition of your own performance, your self-talk will continually betray you. Your inner voice is bound to condemn your own heart. As French philosopher Blaise Pascal said, there is a “God-shaped vacuum” in the heart of each of us. And until we fill that vacuum with God’s love — until we feel it deep in our being — our sense of worth and significance is elusive.
Judah Smith is lead pastor of Churchome (formerly The City Church) based in Seattle, Washington. Churchome is a thriving multisite church noted for its cultural relevance, commitment to biblical integrity and faith, and love for Jesus. Judah is known around the United States and the world for his preaching ministry. His fresh, practical, humorous messages demystify the Bible and make Christianity real. Judah is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human.
Les Parrott is a New York Times number-one bestselling author. He is cofounder, with his wife, Leslie, of the Center for Relationship Development on the campus of Seattle Pacific University. He is the co-author of such books as High–Maintenance Relationships, Love Talk, 3 Seconds, The Hour that Matters Most and the award–winning Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. Les has been featured in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. His many television appearances include The View, The O’Reilly Factor, CNN, Good Morning America and The Oprah Show.
Taken from Bad Thoughts: A Preacher and a Shrink's Guide to Reclaiming Your Mind and Soul by Judah Smith and Les Parrott. Copyright © 2025. Used by permission of Zondervan.
