Gracepower Over Willpower
Welcome back to Going Deeper for the second episode! I hope you’re having a great day. It’s Wednesday morning as I’m recording this—just turned seven a.m. I lead a Bible study on Wednesday mornings, and I know this might sound crazy to some of you, but we actually meet at 5:30 a.m. at Starbucks every week. It’s definitely a challenge to get up and out that early, but it’s so life-giving, and the Lord has really honored it. So, I’m taking this quiet time before my kiddos wake up to record this episode.
I’m really excited to break down this idea of grace power over willpower. I hope you’re excited too, because this is such an overlooked aspect of grace and truly one of the most important. So let’s dive in soon.
As promised, I want to share some recommendations with you. One book I’ve been slowly reading over the past month is Soul Keeping by John Ortberg. It’s definitely not an easy read—I have to take it one chapter at a time and chew on the pages for at least a day before moving on. But that’s because it’s so rich, full of substance. I’ll link it in the show notes for you.
Before we jump in, I’d really appreciate your help to spread the word about this podcast. Please take a few moments to rate, review, and share this episode with a friend so it can show up in more people’s recommended feeds. Also, as I mentioned in episode one, I created a companion guide called the Go Deeper Guide, which compiles a list of my favorite resources—books, podcasts, links—and 15 ways to go deeper in your relationship with God this season. You can download it via the link in the show notes.
Okay, we have a lot to cover today, so let’s get started. Thanks so much for listening!
Now, tying this into today’s topic about grace:
I grew up Christian—I’d say I grew up in and out of the church. My family was military, so I attended 13 different schools growing up. We moved so often that we rarely stayed in one church for very long. Because of that, I never really had roots, never had a rooted faith or someone discipling or mentoring me.
When I went to college—a private Christian college—I was still very young in my faith. I wanted to grow and seek the Lord, but honestly, I was extremely naive. Looking back, I realize the biggest thing I misunderstood was the gospel itself. This might sound general, but it’s true: I misunderstood the gospel.
For me, most of my faith felt dependent on spiritual disciplines—reading my Bible, praying, attending church and FCA, and not sinning. It was a very legalistic view of what it meant to be a Christian. When I fell short—when I didn’t read my Bible consistently, didn’t pray, missed church or FCA, slipped up and sinned or partied—I staked all my faith on how well I was performing as a Christian, based on those standards.
After the first year or two of college, trying and failing over and over to live this Christian life by my own strength, I constantly fell short—of my own mark and God’s mark. Eventually, I came to the conclusion: maybe I’m just not cut out for this. Maybe I don’t have enough willpower. I’m not disciplined or self-controlled enough. I’m not enough.
And here’s the point: that is the gospel. We aren’t enough. We aren’t strong enough. We don’t have enough in ourselves. That’s why Jesus had to come and die—and why His grace has to be sufficient for us.
Looking back, if I had understood this concept—that God’s grace is His divine power—I’m not sure I would have fallen away like I did. It’s such a hope-filled theological truth for every believer: you will fail, you won’t measure up, you’re not enough—but there is hope and a path forward that doesn’t leave you feeling defeated.
Where this idea came from for me:
I first heard about grace as power a few months ago. Honestly, it made me a little uneasy—it took me 28 years to fully understand and begin to walk in what feels like a basic concept of faith. But “basic” doesn’t mean simple or easy to understand or put into practice. In fact, that’s often the hardest part.
I was listening to a podcast called The Green Room by Iris Global, where the host interviewed John Bevere, who I’m a big fan of (he wrote The Awe of God, another great read). They discussed this forgotten concept of grace. John shared grace in a way I’d never heard before.
I found a sermon clip from 2020 of John explaining this, and here’s the key part:
“A survey done in 2009 polled over 5,000 Christians across the U.S. The question was: ‘Give three or more definitions or descriptions of the grace of God.’ The overwhelming responses were forgiveness, salvation, a free gift, and the love of God. But here’s the tragedy: only 1.9% said grace is God’s empowerment. Yet, this is exactly how God describes His grace. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, God says to Paul, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ In other words, my grace is my power, giving you the ability to do what you cannot in your own strength. Peter also writes in 2 Peter 1 that grace is divine power. Only 2% of Christians know this in America. Are you with me? This is a problem because you can’t receive anything from God unless you believe it, and you can’t believe what you don’t know. So 98% of Christians try to live godly lives by their own ability—and when you do that, you fail miserably. The result? We create doctrines that undersell grace.”
If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to replay that clip. I actually encourage you to do that because this was exactly my story in college—trying to live the Christian life by willpower and my own strength, without God’s divine help. I failed miserably, got so fed up that I stopped trying, and began intentionally walking in sin, distancing myself from God.
When I first heard John talk about grace as power, it was a revelation. I’d always thought of grace simply as God’s pardon, but not as empowerment. That shift changed everything for me.
What do I mean by grace power over willpower?
In Soul Keeping, John Ortberg breaks down the soul, referencing a conversation with Dallas Willard. Dallas drew four circles, one inside the other: the innermost is the will—our capacity to choose. Then comes the mind, the body, and finally the soul, which integrates all three.
Dallas defined the will as “patterns and attitudes that are deeply rooted in us.” Free will isn’t a new idea—it’s simply the freedom to choose what we want.
Now, a quick word about willpower in the secular world:
Have you ever looked at the person next to you—the one who seems to excel at everything, never messes up, wakes up at 5 a.m., drinks green juice—and thought, Wow, they’re so disciplined. I just don’t have that kind of willpower?
A survey by the American Psychological Association proves this: when asked about healthy lifestyle changes, participants’ number one reason for not following through was lack of willpower.
According to a psychologist at Florida State, three things are necessary to achieve objectives:
Establish motivation and set a clear goal.
Monitor behavior toward that goal.
Organize yourself.
Whether it’s losing weight, quitting smoking, studying more, or spending less time on Facebook, willpower is critical to success.
Maybe you’ve heard of Atomic Habits by James Clear? It’s sold over 20 million copies and has spent over 200 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. I bought this book during a season when I thought it might help me build good habits—especially spiritual habits—to be a “good Christian.”
But honestly, it didn’t solve my problems. It only highlighted my lack of willpower and self-discipline, which was frustrating. If I read it now, though, I’d probably get a lot from it.
Why? Because now I have a firm foundation—a rooted understanding of God’s grace and the gospel. Back then, I was looking for change outside of God’s Word, outside the power of prayer and spiritual counsel. I was trying to find answers in the secular realm rather than relying on God’s strength.
I’m definitely not knocking Atomic Habits. It’s a great book. But the foundation has to be right. When your feet are firmly planted in God’s grace, you can build on that to develop habits that last.
I’m definitely not dismissing any worldly resources that can genuinely help us grow in our walk with the Lord. There are actually great secular tools that can benefit us and improve our spiritual lives—but we can’t start there. This is our culture’s approach to change and behavior modification: we want to be better people, healthier, slimmer, richer, and so on. So we discipline our wills. That’s the solution society promotes.
According to most psychological experts, willpower is the ability to delay gratification, resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals, and override unwanted thoughts, feelings, or impulses. That’s why we love speakers like Tony Robbins, who talk about determination, drive, discipline, goals, and motivation. Now, I’m not saying those are bad words. We should be determined. We should have drive and discipline. We can have goals and be motivated. None of those are inherently bad.
In my early 20s, I really loved those kinds of people—successful, getting what they wanted out of life. But often their solutions didn’t seem to work well for me, because my will always seemed to lose the battle. I chalked it up to being “not naturally cut out” for whatever goal I was chasing. Can you relate? I know you can.
Now, I want to circle back to that John Bevere clip I played at the beginning, where he said that if only 2% of Christians really understand that grace is God’s empowerment that enables us to go beyond our natural ability, then that means 98% of Christians in America are trying to live godly, holy lives by their own power. And what happens when you try to live holy by your own power? You fail miserably. And then what do you do? You create a doctrine that undersells grace.
I just find that so powerful. We’re going to unpack this even more.
We know grace is a gift. We know we’re saved by grace through faith. We know God’s grace abounds and that we don’t deserve Christ’s death on the cross for eternal life. We know all these things. But we tend to associate grace only with our eternal future—not our present reality.
Even though the New Testament is full of it, we rarely think of grace as the power and means to live godly lives right now. We say, “I want to please God,” but then we get frustrated when worldly methods fail to produce spiritual fruit in us. We get frustrated when books like Atomic Habits don’t help us conquer the sin of gluttony.
But if God calls us to live a certain way here on earth, don’t you think He would provide everything we need to do that in His Word? Well, He does.
Grace is God’s favor—but it’s also His empowerment. Paul David Tripp once said, “God’s grace is the most powerful force in the universe.” Let’s unpack some scripture to explore this further.
Ephesians 2:8–9 is probably the most popular passage about grace. What do we see here? First, grace is not something we can earn; it’s a gift, not the result of works. But second, we are called to do good works—not by our own power or strength, but by God’s power and strength.
This is where many of us get stuck. We understand intellectually that good works aren’t to be done by our own strength, but by God’s. But what does that actually look like in daily life? How do we live God-honoring lives without relying on our own power and will, when that’s all we’ve ever known?
That’s all culture preaches. So, what does grace have to do with it?
Dallas Willard, who I’ll mention again, famously said in his book The Great Omission that grace is not opposed to effort; it’s opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude; effort is an action.
That’s why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, yet it was not I, but the grace of God working with me.” Paul combines grace as a gift with intentional effort—“grace plus effort,” or rather “effort empowered by grace.” It’s like an infinite loop.
In 2 Corinthians 12:9–10, Paul further builds on grace as power: God says to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” So Paul boasts in his weaknesses, because it’s through them that God’s power is displayed. Society doesn’t celebrate weakness—in fact, it tells us to fix our weaknesses or ignore them. But Paul says, God’s power is most alive in our weakness.
When we realize we’re not supposed to live holy lives by our own strength or willpower, but that it’s through our weakness and lack of willpower that God’s strength can show up and transform us—that’s when God gets the glory, not us.
Look at Titus 2:11–13: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.”
Here, grace is training us to live holy, self-controlled lives. This is countercultural.
How does God’s grace, His forgiveness, mercy, and unending love train us to live holy lives?
Bill Gaultier once said that we have to open ourselves to God’s grace—we have to train our body and soul to receive, respond to, and cooperate with it.
But how do we do that? Two key ways: posture and practices.
Your posture is how you position yourself toward Christ and the world. What posture do you usually carry? Pride? Self-sufficiency? Striving? Or faith, humility, dependency?
One of my favorite books, Humility by Andrew Murray, says this beautifully: “Here is the path to the higher life: down, lower down, just as water seeks the lowest place to fill it. When a man is humble, empty, and abased, God’s glory and power flow in to exalt and bless.”
This is what we see in Christ—He was humble to the point of death, and through His humility, God displayed His power by raising Him from the dead and giving eternal life to all who believe.
A humble person says, “I need God. I can’t do this Christian life on my own. I can’t keep going like this. I need Jesus and His Spirit to transform me from the inside out.” No self-help book can fix this. When you stop looking to the world for freedom and transformation and turn fully to Jesus—that is humility.
Then, you must trust and depend on God daily. We must ask ourselves: Am I not just a person of faith, but someone filled with faith? Am I growing in faith? Do I fully trust God’s plan, goodness, and promises? Do I depend on Him completely to provide and show up when I ask?
Faith, humility, and dependency—these postures prime our hearts to receive God’s abundant grace.
Here’s a key point: we often only think of grace as unmerited favor, and only something we receive once or twice—when we’re saved or baptized. But grace is something we must open ourselves to daily, hourly, moment by moment, because we sin regularly. That’s why grace must abound.
Now, our practices are the next way to open ourselves to grace. The two most important are repentance and obedience.
Repentance is beautiful because every time we sin, we get to come back to God with a clean slate. We can come to His throne of grace as many times as we need, knowing He forgives and loves us.
But once we repent and turn to Him, we have the opportunity to obey. Repentance and obedience go hand in hand—it’s a continuous daily cycle.
This cycle is hard to teach a three-year-old—I’m learning this myself. Yesterday was a tough day with my son. He squirted juice all over the floor on purpose. We asked him kindly to pick it up, but he threw a fit and refused. I just wanted him to apologize, grab the towel, clean it up, and say he wouldn’t do it again. As a mom, this quick turnaround of disobedience, repentance, grace, and forgiveness—that’s every parent’s dream.
But that’s not how it went. He refused to clean it up, refused to apologize, threw a tantrum, and then even planned to squirt more juice. Then, he received a consequence I didn’t want to give.
It’s the same with us. God doesn’t want every sin to be a long, drawn-out ordeal. Though sometimes it naturally is, especially with deep struggles, God is a loving Father who just wants His children to run to Him for forgiveness and grace—and then obey what He asks.
But here’s the truth: we are often the ones who bring on shame and temper tantrums that can lead to weeks or even months of distancing ourselves from God. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Repentance and obedience are daily practices we must cultivate to open ourselves up to God’s grace.
One essential practice I almost forgot to mention is the power and discipline of prayer. Prayer is our direct line of communication with God and the Holy Spirit. His presence is always with us, and prayer is how we access Him. Prayer is absolutely vital to receiving God’s grace, power, strength, help, and guidance on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis. When you’re struggling, feeling weak, or tempted, that’s exactly when prayer becomes your lifeline.
You might be surprised how God shows up in small ways—when I’m pregnant and exhausted, I often pray simply, “God, please give me energy.” Within minutes, I feel a boost that I know is His answer. But here’s the thing—He won’t give us what we don’t ask for. James reminds us that prayer is key.
Alongside prayer, we must remember diligence and perseverance. Dallas Willard said, “Grace is opposed to earning, but not opposed to effort.” 2 Peter 1 encourages us to make every effort to supplement our faith with goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. But this kind of growth doesn’t happen in isolation. It requires being rooted in Christ and connected to His body—the church.
Reflecting on my own journey over the past ten years, I recognize many years of weary striving when I was lazy about involvement in church—just attending when convenient, not fully engaged. That wasn’t going to produce the holy transformation I desired. But now, by serving, giving, loving, and consistently participating in my church community, I see fruit in my life that I never could have produced on my own. I’m placing myself in positions to grow and receive God’s grace.
Paul David Tripp puts it well: pursue resources of grace—attend worship, join a Bible study or small group, make time for personal prayer and devotions, seek counsel from mature Christians. If you want to get drenched in God’s grace, stand under the fountain and trust the Lord to send the water.
But here’s what you can’t do: get defeated when growth feels slow, when you stumble repeatedly, or when prayers seem unanswered. True power lies not in defeat, but in a posture of victory in Christ.
The world has no hope. When people outside of Christ face weakness, failure, or hardship, they only have worldly resources to lean on—and no fountain of forgiveness or freedom. They look inward to solve their problems. But we have the incredible privilege of looking outside ourselves to Christ, who gives freedom and forgiveness.
Here’s the bottom line:
God’s grace is power.
It helps us press on when we want to give up.
It grants us full access to God at all times.
It enables us to do what we cannot do on our own.
It gives us strength to say no to sin and temptation.
It points us toward the hope of resurrection and restoration.
Most importantly, God’s grace is powerful because God is all-powerful. When we put our faith and trust in the One who spoke the universe into existence with a single word, we can expect to see His supernatural power at work in our lives.
Who are we that the God of the universe is mindful of us? Yet He is. And by His grace, we have all the power and strength we could ever need to live the life He’s called us to live.
So, if you’re feeling defeated, like a failure, or frustrated by repeated setbacks—know this: that’s exactly why Christ came and died for us. Not just to give us eternal life in heaven, but to give us Himself—His Spirit in us—to live empowered lives here and now.
We’re still called to pursue holiness and live godly lives. But we are never left to do it on our own strength or understanding. The self-help books and secular motivational advice can only supplement so much—they’re not the source of the power we need. That source is God’s grace.
I hope this encourages you today. If anything here resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you! You can email me, leave a review, or share this with a friend—it truly means the world to me. And if you have questions or want to dive deeper into any topic, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll catch up with you next time!
Books Mentioned
Soul Keeping by John Orteberg: https://amzn.to/4foDqMr
The Awe of God by John Bevere: https://amzn.to/4dnR1BV
Humility by Andrew Murray: https://amzn.to/4dIVwav
Follow me on Instagram:
