You know, none of us can earn our way into heaven because eternal life is a free gift when you accept Jesus as the Lord of your life.

Hey everybody, this is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, and today Rick Warren continues a series called Good News about grace.

You can't truly understand the Christian life until you understand grace. It's at the heart of your faith and your relationship with God. And in this series, you're going to discover how not to only understand grace, but how to experience it and the joy that it brings. Let's go to the final part

of a message called Liberating Grace. Romans 831 says this, if God is for us, who can be against us?

Now notice that God is not just with us.

The Bible says God is for us.

Now ladies and gentlemen, that is the essence of the doctrine of grace.

Grace can be summed up in four words.

God is for us.

God's on your side. God is not sitting up there in the heavens looking down on you

saying, what can I punish next in their life? If you have received God's grace and you've become

in part of God's family, then God is for you. Now, if you're thumb in your nose to God and you're saying, God, I'm going to be my own God, I'm going to work my way into heaven, I don't need you, well, of course God is not for you. But when you come in sincerity and honesty and humility and go, God, I admit it, I'm imperfect, I don't stand a chance of getting into a perfect heaven except through you. Please show me your grace. God is for us. Now again,

that's a hard thing to accept for some people because you were trained, you were customized,

you were programmed to think of conditional love.

And all your life, you just felt like you could never measure up.

The L in Relax stands for, let God handle things.

Let God handle things in my life.

Now, that's very important because at the root of perfectionism is a desire to control.

You see, you think that if you can just control things, then they'll be perfect.

And so if I can just control my spouse, we'll have a perfect marriage.

If I control my kids, they'll never get in

trouble and always be safe. If I can control my career, my path will be assured. If I can control

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