Grace Is Greater
Hi Friends,
Every once in a while, I have a conversation where I find myself thinking, How in the world did we get here?
My conversation with Max was one of those.
We talked about climbing mountains.
Road trips with almost no plan.
Praying for complete strangers.
A man with the words “Lost Hope” tattooed across his fingers.
A dream involving the number 555.
A highway.
A town called Jericho.
And several moments Max still can't completely explain.
But somewhere underneath all of those stories was something much simpler that really challenged me:
Max decided he didn't want to just know about God. He wanted to know Him.
I think there is a big difference between the two.
Max grew up believing in God. He went to church. He knew what he was supposed to believe.
But at some point, he began asking himself why a relationship with the Creator of the universe didn't feel more personal.
So he started pursuing God differently.
He talked to Him.
He asked questions.
He made room to listen.
And sometimes, when he believed God was asking him to do something, he actually did it—even when it sounded a little crazy.
That is where some of these stories begin.
One of my favorites was Max's trip to West Virginia.
He believed God was telling him to go somewhere people had lost hope.
That's about all he knew.
No speaking engagement.
No church waiting for him.
No carefully planned itinerary.
He just went.
Eventually, that journey brought him face-to-face with a man whose fingers literally had the words “Lost Hope” tattooed across them.
I remember thinking while Max was telling me that story:
What if he hadn't gone?
Not because I think every thought we have is a message from God. Max doesn't believe that either. We talked about the importance of Scripture, discernment, wisdom, and learning to recognize God's character.
But I do wonder how many times we ask God to use us while also asking Him to make everything perfectly clear and comfortable first.
Sometimes obedience comes before understanding.
And Max has certainly learned that.
His journey hasn't been perfect.
There have been mistakes.
There have been painful seasons.
There have been moments when he has needed the very grace he had spent years telling other people about.
And maybe that is what made his story resonate with me.
Because following God doesn't mean we suddenly get everything right.
It means we keep coming back.
We keep listening.
We keep learning.
We keep allowing Him to change us.
And we discover that His grace is bigger than we understood before we needed it ourselves.
Then there is 555.
I won't explain that story here because it is one of those stories you really need to hear Max tell from beginning to end.
But I will tell you this:
It isn't really a story about numbers.
It's a story about how God used something Max didn't understand to lead him toward something he desperately needed to understand.
Grace.
That word kept coming back to me after our conversation.
Grace when we get it right.
Grace when we don't.
Grace when the road makes sense.
Grace when we have absolutely no idea where God is taking us.
And grace that was never dependent on us having a perfect story in the first place.
Toward the end of our conversation, we talked about Ephesians 1 and the idea that God knew us before the foundation of the world.
Think about what that means.
He didn't choose some future, cleaned-up version of us.
He knew the whole story.
And still chose us.
I don't know about you, but that makes grace feel a whole lot bigger to me.
Max's story challenged me to ask myself whether there are places where I have made God too small.
Places where I want Him predictable.
Explainable.
Comfortable.
Contained inside the little box I've created for how I think He should work.
Maybe faith sometimes means being willing to admit:
God is bigger than my box.
I hope you'll listen to this conversation.
There are stories that will make you laugh, stories that may leave you with questions, and moments that I think will make you examine your own relationship with God.
But more than anything, I hope it reminds you that God is still working—even when we can't yet see how all the pieces fit together.
And His grace is always bigger than we think.
With love and hope,
Dallas