God never prefabs or mass-produces people. No slapdash shaping. "I make all things new," he declares (Rev. 21:5 NKJV). He didn't hand you your granddad's bag or your aunt's life; he personally and deliberately packed you. . .

Why did God leave us one tale after another of wounded lives being restored? So we could be grateful for the past? So we could look back with amazement at what Jesus did? No. No. No. A thousand times no. The purpose of these stories is not to tell us what Jesus did. Their purpose is to tell us what Jesus does.

Do you want to get . . . sober? Solvent? Educated? Better? Do you want to get in shape? Over your past? Beyond your upbringing? Do you want to get stronger, healthier, happier? Would you like to leave Bethesda in the rearview mirror? Are you ready for a new day, a new way? Are you ready to get unstuck?

Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness And rivers in the desert." ISAIAH 43:18—19

Beneath the epidermis of today's deeds are the unresolved actions of years past.

This is no time for inactivity or despair. Off with the mourning clothes. Take some chances; take the initiative. You never know what might happen. You might have a part in bringing Christ to the world. Grace

Some accept the blood but forget the water. They want to be saved but don't want to be changed. Others accept the water but forget the blood. They are busy for Christ but never at peace in Christ.

Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart—poisoned as it is with pride and pain—and replacing it with his own. Rather than tell you to change, he creates the change. Do you clean up so he can accept you? No, he accepts you and begins cleaning you up.

Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men" (v. 10). Contrary to what you may have been told, Jesus doesn't limit his recruiting to the stout-hearted. The beat up and worn out are prime prospects in his book, and he's been known to climb into boats, bars, and brothels to tell them, "It's not too late to start over.

No more Bethesda for you. No more waking up and going to sleep in the same mess. God dismantled the neutral gear from your transmission. He is the God of forward motion, the God of tomorrow. He is ready to write a new chapter in your biography.

God's grace has a drenching about it. A wildness about it. A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside-downness about it. Grace comes after you. It rewires you. From insecure to God secure. From regret-riddled to better-because-of-it. From afraid-to-die to ready-to-fly. Grace is the voice that calls us to change and then gives us the power to pull it off.1

CHAPTER 2: THE GRACE-SHAPED LIFE 1. Jim Reimann, Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (Nashville: Word Publishing, 2001), 16. 2. Ibid., 29—31.