Ah, the joys of a clear conscience.

Entering a room of jostling colleagues, sure you’ve spoken kindly of each one. Finishing your tax return with certainty you’ve paid each charge the law required. Walking by mouth-watering chocolates for six days straight without even opening the box.

This doesn’t sound like your story? You either?

The inner voice that calls to mind our secret crossings of the line is rarely ever silent. While waiting for much-needed sleep, we churn on memories we’d love to lose. We’ve whittled down our rivals; we gave ourselves deductions for “unspecified” expenses; we bought replacement boxes of those chocolate cremes we can’t resist. The list our consciences won’t leave alone is long—and growing longer.

Which makes grace even lovelier when we discover its power and its healing.

When God forgives us through the sacrifice of Jesus, He chooses—in His grace—to forget the very things we otherwise could not forget. “As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).

The final word about our lives is not a litany of pride or gluttony or lust. The word is love—the kind that will not let us go.

In grace, we may forget the things God chooses to forget.

So stay in it. -Bill Knott

It’s natural enough to prize what benefits me most.

Self-interest is the driving force in almost all our culture. Do I like it? Does it taste good? Did it make me laugh? Does it put money in my pocket? We measure almost everything by what we get and gain.

And so it’s natural to think of something as extravagant as God’s unprecedented kindness as a kind of fortunate transaction that wipes away our past and entitles us to heaven.

But God’s deep kindness in sending Jesus as the bearer of our sins was never only meant to “save a wretch like me.” Yes, grace redeems us first as individuals, but never leaves us spiraling in spiritual self-interest.

The purpose of the love of God is that we freely give what we’ve received. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). The stream of grace should always have an outlet, flowing from God’s heart through yours to water other barren soil. What you receive, you’re meant to share.

Grace always has a global span: it always was a global plan. “For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

The love that saves us makes us gracious, loving as we have been loved.

So stay in it. -Bill Knott

Have you ever listened to a dull and tired song—only to be stirred and thrilled when it reprised in some new, higher key? 

Then you know something of the grace of God, whatever else your story tells. 

Grace comes to us as unexpected joy when our performance, short or long—had lifted neither us nor anyone around us. We were muddling through the music, vocalizing rote notes and mangling the lyrics. We didn’t know a brighter, higher anthem lay hidden in the lines.

But God in kindness teaches us to sing of faith so rich and love so sweet we are amazed we never knew it sooner.  With one much-humbled, transformed saint named Paul, we happily exclaim, “Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things” (Eph 3:8-9).

Grace pulls us up—our bodies, minds, and especially our hopes—when we’ve been mumbling through the stanzas of our yesteryears. The God who lives and gives—and gives again—surprises us with freedom from our past and freedom for our future. 

Hear what your life sounds like when set in God’s new, saving key.

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

When most of what we read and see is governed by some soulless algorithm built to anger us or sell us something—it’s hard to know if joy is real, if love is kind, if gentle words are really meant to bless. 

And yet joy lingers, gentleness persists, and tens of millions of times a day, someone whispers “I love you” to a child, a spouse, a friend, a former enemy.   

This is true for both those who do not own the name of Jesus and for those who celebrate His power and love:  “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). 

The tenderness we witness, the patient words we find when stressed, the arms with which we wrap the hurting and the sinful—these are the remnants of the love once given at Creation and now given us preeminently in Jesus: “This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim 1:9-10).

Resist the anger amped by code. Love with the grace by which you are forever loved. 

And stay in it. -Bill Knott

“He’s so much better than I am,” we say, proving just how little we know of someone else’s life.

“She’s a saint,” we say admiringly, assuming that the woman we can see is always just as good as we imagine.

We assign a top-notch grade to behaviors we observe, and make assumptions that the life consistency we can’t achieve is somehow available to others.

But grace reminds us of the brokenness we share—each one of us—regardless of the estimate of others.

Behind the fair façade of piety and cool, we each know just how far we fall below the expectations of our God—and how each well-lived life is only, always, saved by grace.

All ranks, all grades, all estimates are vanities and not realities. If you can find a soul not absolutely saved by grace, then you have found the rarest form of human life.

Give up your search: there is no other way.

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Going underground is one of humanity’s oldest responses to fear, war, or pestilence.

Archaeologists have uncovered vast subterranean cities, carved out by those who believed that living in the light made them vulnerable. Victims of persecution, fugitives—even families fleeing natural disasters or climate shifts—all chose to dwell where only torches and flickering lamps could pierce the darkness.

But human beings weren’t made for life underground. Our bodies, our minds, and even our food sources depend on what’s green and growing and bathed in sunlight. Only fear—without and within—could cause us to live where we otherwise bury our dead.

And the darkness is never only physical. Living without sunlight distorts our grasp of reality, and even of God. If we never see the sun or the stars of the Milky Way, we think He is no bigger than what scares us.

Yet there is light for us—warm, welcoming, life-giving. God’s Word declares the good news of our liberation: “He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of His dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins” (Colossians 1:13–14).

You were made to live in the light. Be done with all that’s buried, fearful, and dark.

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

“I just can’t catch a break,” he sighs, watching floodwaters climb five feet up the walls of his ruined home.

“I’ve got plenty of luck,” she weeps over the crumpled fender of her old Toyota. “It’s just all bad.”

The weary chorus of this world is a dirge about how little control we truly have. Medical bills crush us. Friendships we cherish grow distant and cold. The machines on which our lives depend break down with unnerving frequency. Those we love get sick and die.

Is any of this seen by Someone—anyone—who can do something about it?

To doubting, disheartened people just like us, the apostle Paul wrote one of history’s most radiant lines: “God’s Son was before all else, and by Him everything is held together” (Col. 1:17). With all their seeming randomness and pain, our lives and our futures are held in the embrace of One whose arms stretched wide for us from a broken tree: “God was pleased for Him to make peace by sacrificing His blood on the cross, so that all beings in heaven and on earth could be brought back to God” (v. 20).

“I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End,” Jesus said of Himself. Nothing escapes His notice. Nothing lies outside His control. Our pain is real—but it is temporary.

Hope endures. The grace of God outlasts our brokenness.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Most of us inherited a God no kinder than we were—a deity whose major role seemed meting out tough penalties for willful or impetuous mistakes.

Like primitive believers everywhere, we read His displeasure in thunderstorms, bruised knees, and lost puppies—for was there anything for which we weren’t somehow to blame?

So it is that finding grace is the great unlearning of our past, the sweet and joyful discovery that in Jesus, our sins aren’t being counted against us. What we sang in innocence was actually, fundamentally true: “Jesus loves me”—genuinely loves me. He can’t imagine a greater happiness than enjoying my trust and affection.

How glorious to have been wrong about it all—to celebrate the truth that undermines our youthful foolishness and fear. His perfect love still casts out fear, and makes us wise unto salvation.

By grace, our thinking—and our living—is renewed. So stay in grace. -Bill KNott

Ever thought of running away from God?

Like naive children in moments of hot shame and brokenness, we imagine there’s some deeply-hidden spot where what we’ve done cannot be seen, where we can huddle with our guilt. Perhaps in some dark mountain cave. Perhaps beneath the blankets of our bed. Perhaps beneath the cellar stairs.

But God—and grace—are inescapable, and our most private hiding spots are never hid from Him. The psalmist said it best: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast” (Ps 139: 7-10).

Grace seeks us even when we’ve blown it big—to heal and forgive us, not in vengeance or to punish. We hide in foolishness and fear: God teases us into His light. And when we’re found, hot tears blend into easy, grateful smiles.

Be sensible: choose not to hide.

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Sometimes through the dust and smoke, we trace the features of a friend—someone whose rich, remembered kindness soothes the soul and calms the turbulence. We hold on to such people for good reason: they have held us—gripped us, even—when the world seemed topsy-turvy and every voice was loud.

They were—they are—God’s grace in human form, a bit of heaven lingering to give us hope and get us through. In some faint way, they call to mind the one Who came to live among us and be one with us: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us. . . . full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Friends hold us for a minute, or perhaps an hour: He holds us for eternity, and promises to never willingly let go. “Be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20). Knowing how we doubt His love, Jesus repeatedly reminds us, “Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me” (Jn 15:15).

Grace visits us through selfless souls, and heals us through their acts of kindness. The God who motivates such generosity is no further from you than a friend who shares dark roads and waits with you for dawn’s first light.

So when you pray, thank God for friends who live His grace.

And stay in it. -Bill Knott