(This series was inspired by reading Running from Mercy by Anthony J. Carter. While these articles reflect themes that challenged and encouraged me, they are my own personal reflections on Scripture and what God has been teaching me during one of the most difficult seasons of my life.)
There are some books that simply teach you information. Then there are books that quietly expose your heart. As part of a small group study with The Redeemed, I recently finished reading Running from Mercy by Anthony J. Carter, expecting to revisit the familiar story of Jonah. Like many Christians, I’ve heard sermons about Jonah since I was a child. I knew about the storm, the great fish, the reluctant prophet, and the city of Nineveh. But this time was different. Instead of seeing Jonah as a distant biblical figure, I began to see pieces of myself.
Over the past year, God has brought me through one of the hardest seasons of my life. I’ve lost my job. My marriage has fallen apart despite my desire for reconciliation. I’ve spent a year separated from my three boys. Many of the things that once gave me a sense of identity and purpose seemed to disappear almost overnight.
Like anyone walking through loss, I’ve spent countless hours asking God why. Why this? Why now? Why won’t You change my circumstances? Yet while I was asking God to change what was happening around me, I slowly realized He was doing something far more important. He was changing what was happening inside me.
That is why Running from Mercy resonated so deeply. It wasn’t simply teaching me about Jonah. It was teaching me about grace, and it was showing me how little I truly understood it.
More Than a Story About a Fish
Most people remember Jonah for one thing, the fish. Children’s Bible storybooks are filled with colorful illustrations of Jonah being swallowed by a giant sea creature. While it’s certainly one of the most miraculous moments in Scripture, it isn’t the point of the book. The real story of Jonah is about the heart of God. It is about His surprising grace, astonishing mercy, and relentless pursuit of sinners. Surprisingly, it is about His determination to transform His own people.
As I read Anthony Carter’s reflections, it became clear that Jonah wasn’t simply running from God’s command. He was running from what God’s grace revealed about his own heart. That realization stopped me, because if I’m honest, I’ve done the same thing.
Grace and Mercy: They’re Related, But They’re Not the Same
Before we go any further, I think it’s important to understand two words Christians often use interchangeably: grace and mercy. They’re closely connected, but they are not identical.
Grace is God giving us what we do not deserve. We deserve condemnation because of our sin, yet through Jesus Christ, God gives us forgiveness, eternal life, adoption into His family, and every spiritual blessing. None of those gifts can be earned. They are freely given because of His love.
Mercy, on the other hand, is God withholding what we do deserve. Because of our sin, every one of us deserves God’s righteous judgment. Yet through Christ, God withholds that judgment and offers forgiveness instead.
Essentially, grace is receiving an undeserved gift, while mercy is not receiving a deserved punishment. The two work together beautifully. God’s grace moved Him to show us mercy, and when we truly understand God’s grace, something begins to change inside us. We become more willing to extend mercy to others. That sounds wonderful in theory, until the person who needs our mercy is someone who has deeply wounded us.
We’ll explore that tension more in part two, but before we can understand mercy, we first have to understand grace.
You Won’t Know the Grace of God Until…
One sentence from Anthony Carter’s book has echoed in my mind ever since I read it.
“The blessed truth is that you won’t know the grace of God until you give up trying to save yourself.”
I highlighted that in my book, because I realized how much of my life had been spent trying to do exactly that. Not to save myself from hell, I know salvation comes through Jesus Christ, but to save myself through performance, achievement, being “good enough.”
If I could just become a better husband…
A better father…
A better employee…
A better Christian…
Then maybe I’d finally feel secure.
The problem is that performance makes a terrible savior. Eventually, it always fails. Looking back, I can see how much of my identity had become wrapped up in the roles I filled.
I was a marketing director.
A husband.
A father.
A ministry leader.
Someone people respected.
Then, in less than 24 hours, much of that disappeared.
I lost my career.
My marriage fell apart.
Courtrooms replaced family activities.
Silence replaced laughter around the dinner table.
Instead of helping coach my boys, throw footballs in the front yard, hike together, or go to Cedar Point, I found myself sitting alone, wondering how life had changed so quickly. Those losses were devastating. I wouldn’t wish them on anyone, but as painful as they have been, I have slowly begun to wonder if God has been accomplishing something through them that comfort never could. I believe He has been stripping away every identity I trusted more than Him, because grace begins where self-reliance ends.
Grace Cannot Be Earned
One of the most freeing truths in all of Scripture is that God never asked us to save ourselves.
Paul writes in Ephesians:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” – Ephesians 2:8–9
Notice how many times Paul removes us from the equation. Grace, gift, not your own doing, not works, no boasting. Everything about salvation points away from ourselves and toward Christ. Yet many of us continue trying to live the Christian life as though God is waiting for us to prove ourselves worthy.
We quietly believe things like:
“If I can just fix this…”
“If I can just become better…”
“If I can just work harder…”
Then maybe God will finally be pleased with me.
But that isn’t the gospel. The gospel begins when we stop trying to climb our way to God and instead fall at the foot of the cross, admitting we never could. That is why Carter’s quote struck me so deeply. I had spent years believing grace, but I wasn’t always living like someone who truly depended on it.
Jonah’s Real Problem
When God called Jonah to preach to Nineveh, Jonah immediately boarded a ship headed in the opposite direction. At first glance, that seems irrational. Why would a prophet run from God? The answer is revealed later in the book. After Nineveh repents and God spares the city, Jonah finally tells God exactly why he fled:
“That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love…” – Jonah 4:2
That may be one of the most shocking verses in the entire Old Testament. Jonah wasn’t afraid that God would judge Nineveh. He was afraid that God would forgive them. He knew exactly who God was, gracious, merciful, patient, abounding in steadfast love. The problem wasn’t God’s character. The problem was Jonah’s heart, and that’s where this story begins to become deeply personal.
God Brings Us to the End of Ourselves
The more I have reflected on Jonah’s story, the more I’ve become convinced that the greatest miracle in the book wasn’t the fish. It wasn’t the storm. It wasn’t even the repentance of Nineveh. The greatest miracle was God’s relentless pursuit of Jonah. God refused to leave His prophet where he was.
Jonah ran.
God pursued.
Jonah resisted.
God persisted.
Jonah became angry.
God patiently asked questions.
Throughout the book, God is not merely trying to get Jonah to preach a sermon. He is transforming Jonah’s heart. I’ve begun to realize that God often works the same way in our lives. Sometimes He calms the storm, sometimes He doesn’t. Sometimes He removes the trial, sometimes He allows it to continue. But in every circumstance, He is inviting us to know Him more deeply.
Looking back over the past year, I can honestly say that I would never have chosen this path. I would have chosen to keep my career. I would have chosen to keep my family together. I would have chosen to continue being a dad for my boys, and watching life unfold the way I had planned. Instead, I found myself walking through a season that stripped away almost everything I thought defined me.
For a long time, I viewed those losses only as punishment or tragedy. Now I see something else. I see God’s grace. Not because losing those things was good, it wasn’t. Not because the pain wasn’t real, it still is. But because God has faithfully met me in places where success never could.
When everything else was taken away, Christ remained, and for the first time in a long time, I began to understand that He was enough.
Grace Is Not Just for the Beginning of the Christian Life
One mistake many Christians make is believing that grace is only about salvation. We understand that we are saved by grace, but then we quietly begin living as though we must earn God’s approval every day afterward. I know I have.
There have been seasons where I measured my value by my productivity, how well I was doing at work, whether people respected me. Whether I was succeeding as a husband and father, and whether others viewed me as a “good Christian.” Those things became subtle scorecards. Without realizing it, I began trusting my performance more than God’s promises.
But the gospel doesn’t just save us by grace. It sustains us by grace. Every breath, victory over temptation, act of obedience, opportunity to repent, and every ounce of spiritual growth, is all grace. Paul understood this when he wrote:
“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.” – 1 Corinthians 15:10
Even the apostle Paul knew that everything he had become was the result of God’s grace, not his own strength.
A Different Kind of Success
As I look back, I realize I spent much of my life trying to build the right résumé, career, reputation, and image. None of those things are wrong in themselves. God calls us to work diligently, love our families well, and pursue excellence, but they make terrible foundations for our identity, because they can all disappear.
Jobs end.
Relationships change.
Health fades.
Money disappears.
People disappoint us.
Success comes and goes.
But our identity in Christ never changes. That has become one of the greatest lessons of this season. Before I was ever a husband, father, marketing director, I was a child of God, and that identity is the only one no circumstance can ever take away.
Surprised by Grace
Perhaps that’s why I chose the title Surprised by Grace for this series, because if I’m honest, I didn’t expect grace to meet me here. I expected answers, solutions, and God to fix everything that had gone wrong. Instead, He gave me Himself. Slowly, patiently, through His Word, through godly counselors, faithful friends, and books like Running from Mercy, He has been teaching me that His greatest gift was never the restoration of my circumstances. His greatest gift has always been His presence.
Grace is not simply God making life easier. Grace is God giving us Himself. That realization has changed the way I read Jonah, and it has begun changing the way I see my own story.
Looking Ahead
If part one has taught me anything, it is that the greatest obstacle to experiencing God’s grace isn’t our brokenness. It’s our self-sufficiency. Only when we stop trying to save ourselves do we begin to understand what grace really is.
But Jonah’s story doesn’t end there. In fact, the most uncomfortable part of the book is still ahead, because once we’ve received God’s grace, another question immediately follows. What happens when God extends that same grace to someone who has deeply hurt us? That’s exactly where Jonah struggled, and it’s exactly where I still struggle today.
In part two, we’ll explore why we naturally want grace for ourselves but justice for everyone else, how God uses conviction to expose our own hearts, and why the grace that saves us is also meant to transform us. Until then, may we remember that none of us stand before God because we earned His favor. We stand only because of Jesus Christ. His grace found us. His mercy spared us, and His love continues to change us every day.
✅ Part 1 – You Won’t Know the Grace of God Until You Stop Trying to Save Yourself
✅ Part 2 – When God’s Grace Offends Us
✅ Part 3 – Extending the Mercy We’ve Received
