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As a long-legged teen, I couldn’t see much over the steering wheel of our 1966 station wagon. As a result, I was terrified of driving. Nonetheless, my determined mom had me drive one day to my typing classes at the junior high school. As I inched down the hill into the parking lot, she directed me into a space facing the stone wall barrier.

“You can brake now,” Mom advised patiently. 

I picked up my foot but didn’t move it far enough over, and it touched the gas. As we slightly sped up, my mom’s eyes widened. 

“BRAKE!” she hollered. 

My foot slammed down on that gas pedal, and the powerful engine drove that station wagon through the stone wall. It hung over the barrier, peering down on the playing field ten feet below. I had totaled Mom’s new car.

That remarkable woman quietly sent me to my class while she arranged to have the car towed away. She never mentioned it again. 

That’s grace. I was never accused, punished, or commanded to pay the price. My parents simply replaced the car and gave me a year to recover. Then they bought a little car. I learned how to drive and finally got my driver’s license. 

In the same way, I was drawn before the throne of God twelve years later when Christ intervened. I had broken most of the Ten Commandments and wasn’t even sorry for half of the ways I’d grieved God. I just knew I needed Jesus and couldn’t have a relationship with my heavenly Father without Jesus’ aid. 

That was enough for God. He claimed me as his own, set His Spirit in my heart, and began a lifelong work of teaching, rebuking, redirecting, and training me in righteousness. Gently. Persistently. He invited me to walk with Him each day into eternity, for Christ had absorbed my accusation, my punishment. He’d paid for my crimes. 

Let God transform you—gently, persistently—in a life-long walk with Him into eternity.