“Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace.” — Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace Imagine a man who has had every ounce of his humanity beaten out of him. His name is Jean Valjean. For nineteen years, he was locked away in a brutal French penal colony—initially for stealing a single loaf of bread to feed his starving niece, and then for trying to escape. For nearly two decades, he was treated not as a man, but as an animal with a number. He learned that...

Christian character is not a religious self-improvement project. It’s not a spiritual Pinterest craft where we superglue love, joy, and patience onto ourselves and hope nobody notices the branches are dead. Real Christian growth begins deeper than behavior. It begins with God’s design, God’s grace, God’s Spirit, and the life of Christ taking root in us.

I once saw a grown man working out on an ab crunch machine in the gym while eating a giant cookie. Many of us want spiritual fruit the same way folks want abs every January—quickly, easily, and preferably without having to change much about our habits or daily routine. We want the results without the process. We want apples without planting the trees, a harvest without waiting on the weather, and Christlike character without the slow, steady work God does in our hearts. We want to be more...