The Journey - Cycle of Grace
Have you ever experienced burnout? Do you know that place of exhaustion and discouragement?
I’ve been there a few times, and I’ve learned to recognize it as a big red flag. I need to step back, take a breath, and ask myself some hard questions. How am I overextending myself? Where am I not spending time on things that are life-giving? How have I excluded God from my life?
Burnout and The Cycle of Works
Burnout is a symptom of a broken system - known as the Cycle of Works (1).
In the Cycle of Works, we strive to achieve in order to earn significance and acceptance. It’s easy to slip into! Our workplaces, schools, social media, and the hundreds of marketing messages we get weekly tell us, “Do this and be successful!” “Do that and you will be happy!”
The Cycle of Works runs opposite to God’s plan for us. It tells us we have to achieve things in order to know that we matter (are significant) and are accepted and loved.
God’s intention for us is that we begin with knowing we are accepted and loved. If, however, we start with what we need to do and achieve, we burn out.
This pattern of burnout is nothing new. In the 1960s, British psychologist Frank Lake observed missionaries setting off to serve in India full of energy and hope, only to return a few months later drained and despondent. These missionaries were working to make a difference, without being grounded in the things that could empower their fruitfulness. In their own power and strength, they soon burned out and came limping home.
How do we break free from this Cycle of Works?
A New Way – The Cycle of Grace
Lake, together with Swiss Theologian Emil Brunner, developed a model to explain this phenomenon and to propose an alternative that was life-giving and sustainable. Trevor Hudson has further refined this model to include patterns from the life of Jesus in the Gospels. Hudson calls it the Cycle of Grace (2).
The Cycle of Grace starts with who God is and who I am. He is our divine, powerful, loving friend. And we are His beloved children. We are accepted and loved. We don’t need to do anything to earn God’s love. We are unconditionally loved.
From here, the Cycle of Grace moves through our lives to empower us to be fruitful in the world. It is the opposite of the Cycle of Works.
In the Gospels, Jesus lived this Cycle of Grace. His life on earth was a rhythm of input and output, continually renewed in the fact that He was accepted and loved, which flowed into being fruitful in the world.
A Closer Look
There are four movements to the Cycle of Grace that continually flow from one to the next.
Acceptance – I am loved.
Sustenance – I need life-giving input.
Significance – I matter.
Fruitfulness – I love others.
This is the rhythm of Jesus’ life in the Gospels. Refreshed by the input of God’s acceptance and life-giving sustenance, to be empowered for the output of significance and fruitfulness.
Acceptance – Knowing You are Loved
Jesus is our best example of living in the grace of acceptance. In the Gospels, it is clear Jesus knew He was loved by God the Father. Everything He said and did flowed from this secure place of acceptance.
Mark 1:9-11 is a beautiful description of the love Jesus received from the Father. At Jesus’ baptism, when He rose from the water, this is what He heard…
And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Mark 1:11
This is also our starting point — acceptance from our heavenly Father. His grace and love are always with us. God enables us to receive, and live from, this place of acceptance.
The Prodigal Son in Luke 15 reminds us that the Father’s love for us never wavers. After having taken his inheritance and spent it on wild living, the Prodigal Son realizes his foolishness and, full of regrets and shame, returns to his father. His father, rather than berating his son, responds this way…
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. Luke 15:20
This is the truth you can return to —
You are God’s Beloved.
Knowing we are loved and accepted gives us a firm foundation to love others well. Rather than approaching everything in life as a transaction, we tap into the deep well of God’s love and can share this love with others.
Sustenance – Spiritual Food to Sustain You
Without God, the world is not a loving place. The world tells us we need to work for love and acceptance. This leads to burn out.
We need spiritual food (habits and rhythms) to remind us we are beloved. In the Gospels, Jesus shows us how to live in this sustenance of God’s grace.
How did Jesus sustain His close relationship with God?
Jesus’ habits and rhythms sustained Him. He prayed, He spent time with Scripture, He pulled away from people to be alone with His Heavenly Father… He also slept, received meals and ministry from others, and had significant relationships with family and friends. Hudson counts over 42 ways Jesus received the grace of sustenance (3).
How can we receive this sustaining grace? Sustenance comes from many habits that we would simply call “healthy habits” — regular times to go to bed and wake up, mealtime patterns, and exercising our bodies in strengthening movement.
Other ways to receive sustenance require us to be more intentional — taking time to rest, doing things that bring us joy, or spiritual rhythms that remind us of God’s love and presence. These rhythms are things like worship, time in Scripture, prayer, and solitude. These, and many other spiritual rhythms, are things Jesus did as well. As they sustained Him, they also help us draw deeply from God’s well of love and grace.
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. Isaiah 12:3
Sustaining grace enables us to live out God’s calling in our life… our significance in the world.
Significance – Showing Up As Only You Can
Our significance follows our acceptance as God’s Beloved and the sustenance of rhythms that fill us with God’s grace.
Significance answers the question –
How do you show up as you in the world?
We are made to be a sign of God’s love in the world. He has made you to bestow love in the world in a way only you can. It can take time to put words to this. It may be something simple. You might be called to be a —
Friend to others
Listening presence
Revealer of beauty
Talk to God about this and be patient. He delights in having the conversation with you. There is no rush. God has created you to make a difference in the world. As you spend time with Him seeking His direction, He will show you His heart in you and how to show up as you in the world.
Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water. John 7:38
Our significance, the way we show up in the world, has an impact on those around us. This is the fruitfulness of our lives that flows from our significance.
Fruitfulness – Sharing God’s Love
As we cooperate with God’s never-ending cycle of grace and love, we are enabled to be fruitful. Our significance points to the places in the world we are called to. We can have confidence that we can make a difference, that we can point others to God’s love. We are no longer operating FOR acceptance. We are operating FROM acceptance.
Fruitfulness is the overflow from a life of grace.
The love and acceptance we receive from God moves through us. The sustaining grace of our habits and rhythms keep us grounded in His love and point us to our unique design. Our uniqueness enables us to show up in the world, and to love the world, in a way no one else can. Our fruitfulness is the unique way we love others.
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. James 3:17
This “wisdom from above” flows through us and overflows into the lives of others.
Which Cycle?
We face a choice every day. Which cycle will we live in?
The Cycle of Works is backwards from God’s intention. It starts with fruitfulness (Frank Lake called it achievement) and moves around the cycle to acceptance. It is working to earn our value. God does not move this way. We leave Him out of our lives when we try to work our way toward being accepted and loved.
The Cycle of Works is exhausting. It is discouraging. It denies the truth.
The truth is we are image bearers of God. We are His Beloved. Our efforts to prove or earn love will always fall short… and leave us empty.
The Cycle of Grace is life-giving. It is empowering. It is exciting. We receive God’s acceptance as His Beloved Children. We stay connected to His love and power through the sustenance of habits and rhythms. We discover our unique significance in the world as bearers of His love to others. We are fruitful as we live out the flow of His grace through our lives.
An Invitation
If the Cycle of Grace is attractive to you… if you are heading toward burnout… if you want God’s love and grace to flow through you…
Here’s a step you and I can take today -
We can start with simply becoming aware of our patterns. We can catch ourselves putting work and achievement ahead of our acceptance. We can take notice when we accept the world’s approach to our value and significance and the lie that “you are what you do.”
As best as we are able, we can notice without judging ourselves (or when we see it in others, refrain from judging them, too!)
Change begins with awareness. We can’t change what we do not see. Be gentle with yourself. Achievement is the water we swim in. It can be challenging to spot. And challenging to develop new ways of being.
Join a friend in conversation about this. Sharing the journey and the associated struggles is encouraging. You are not alone. There is hope for a new kind of life.
What’s Next
The next few blog posts will help us grasp our acceptance and live our lives fed by God’s sustenance.
Coming Soon
Interested in learning more? Join us this fall for From the Inside Out, a six-session course developed by Renovare that goes deeper with the topics we’ve been exploring in The Journey. Want to sign up? Have questions? Email me - anne@shallowford.church
References
(1) Hudson, Taylor, Jerry P. Haas. 2012. The Cycle of Grace: Living in Sacred Balance. Nashville: Upper Room Books, 46.
(2) Ibid. 11.
(3) Hudson, Taylor. Renovare Institute Residency I, September 15, 2023.
Additional Resources
Cycle of Grace Summary by Stephen Elmes, Bookham Baptist Church
Book – The Cycle of Grace by Trevor Hudson
YouTube video – Trevor Hudson Teaching on Acceptance