When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life-Transforming Grace

When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life-Transforming Grace

by Ruth Chou Simons
When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life-Transforming Grace

When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life-Transforming Grace

by Ruth Chou Simons

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Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Ruth Chou Simons is a Colorado artist who beautifully captures the spirituality and beauty inherent in nature and the seasons. Here, she encourages women to stop chasing after approval, and rest in the knowledge of God's grace.

Grace Secures What Striving Cannot

In this hustling, image-forward age of opportunity, we feel more anxious than ever. Despite all the affirming memes and self-reflections that dominate social media feeds, approval and worth often seem assigned to what we do rather than who we are. And we end up constantly feeling like we’re behind, lacking, and failing—at home, at work, with friends, with God.

Ruth Chou Simons knows something about feeling measured by achievement, performance, and the approval of others. As a Taiwanese immigrant growing up between two cultures, Ruth was always on a mission to prove her worth, until she came to truly understand the one thing that changes everything: the extravagant, undeserved gift of grace from a merciful God. In When Strivings Cease, Ruth guides you on a journey to find freedom from the never-ending quest for self-improvement. She shows you how to

  • confront the ways you look to superficial means of acceptance and belonging;
  • find relief in realizing self-help isn’t the answer because you can’t be so amazing that you won’t need grace;
  • stop seeing God as someone to perform for and start finding delight in responding to his welcome; and
  • let go of trying to rely on your own strength, your own abilities, and your own savvy by truly understanding the freedom Jesus purchased for you.

With personal stories, biblical insights, practical applications, and touches of original artwork by Ruth, this transformational book helps you see the beautiful truth that God’s favor is the only currency you need—because in Christ you are enough.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781400225002
Publisher: Nelson, Thomas, Inc.
Publication date: 10/12/2021
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishing
Format: eBook
Pages: 224
Sales rank: 790,729
File size: 35 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Ruth Chou Simons is a Wall Street Journal bestselling and award-winning author of several books and Bible studies, including GraceLaced, Beholding and Becoming, and When Strivings Cease. She is an artist, entrepreneur, podcaster, and speaker, using each of these platforms to sow the Word of God into people's hearts. Through her online shoppe at GraceLaced.com and her social media community, Simons shares her journey of God's grace intersecting daily life with word and art. Ruth and her husband, Troy, are grateful parents to six boys—their greatest adventure.

Table of Contents

Introduction: We're Missing Something (Why We're So Tired. Why We Strive.) xi

Part 1 When Striving Isn't Enough

Chapter 1 Bent and Broken: Striving to Please 3

Chapter 2 Unworthy: Striving for Attention 21

Chapter 3 Just Amazing Enough to Not Need Grace: Striving to Be Good Enough 33

Chapter 4 The Welcome We Long For: Striving for Approval 47

Chapter 5 Pressure to Perform: Striving to Save Ourselves Through Perfection 61

Chapter 6 The Lunchroom: Striving to Belong 75

Chapter 7 Honor and Shame: Striving to Outrun Shame 87

Chapter 8 The Gift: Striving to Have It All 105

Part 2 When Grace Changes Everything

Chapter 9 Grace Makes New, Not Better 123

Chapter 10 Grace Fuels Good Works 141

Chapter 11 Grace Cancels Our Debt, For Real 155

Chapter 12 Grace Rewrites Our Stories 171

Chapter 13 Grace Replaces Fear with Freedom 189

Chapter 14 Grace Makes Forgiveness Possible 205

Chapter 15 Grace Is Enough to Hold You Together 219

A Close Prayer 227

Acknowledgments 229

Notes 233

About the Author 235

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