“Have you been writing that whole time? Have you been calculating what you’re going to say that whole time?” She had been gone ten minutes when she returned. I started to say no, but then smiled and said yes. When I heard the word “calculating,” it spoke straight to my heart. And though we laughed about about my taking ten minutes to write one text, it was a moment of realization for me:

The calculated life can be an exhausted life.

I calculate a lot. I calculate my words in a sermon and in a blog post. I calculate my thoughts and sentences in a video and in a presentation. I calculate my texts and my emails. I calculate the minutes and hours in my day. I calculate my macros in what I eat. But here’s the thing I realized then and I realize now: I need to also be willing to have and to accept the “un-calculated” moments, hours, and even days in my life.

The calculated life can be a good life, a productive life of self-discipline and self-control. But it can also, if I’m not careful, be the exhaustive, endless, even idolatrous, pursuit of always being right and never being wrong. In other words, of being perfect. And that kind of life is impossible.

What do I want when I want to live a calculated life? To be better? To do better? To be the best? To be known? To be admired? To be loved? It’s when I don’t live up to my calculations that I begin to get to the bottom of what my heart really wants.

As a result of those un-calculated moments, do I feel that my day is ruined? That I’m ruined? That my effort will never be enough? That I’m not enough? Do I want to withdraw and retreat from everything and everyone?

No one can sustain maximum effort of life forever. I am finite, limited, flawed, human. My wisdom, my strength, my effort has an end. It’s at that end point that I begin to realize my need for grace. That my need for grace is endless. That I will never outgrow, outperform, outlast my need for grace.

My failures are reminders, gentle and forceful, that I need God’s grace.

God’s grace is perfect in my imperfection. Strong in my weakness. Full in my lack. Wise in my foolishness. Merciful in my rebellion. Welcoming in my failure. It requires nothing of me except that I be not enough. That I stop striving to be enough, to do enough.

There’s nothing in my life that is impossible for God’s grace to accomplish. Yet, there’s everything impossible about attempting to live my life apart from God’s grace. Only grace is enough. Rather, only Jesus is enough. He is the Giver of all grace. And while I do believe he wants me to live a disciplined life, and delights in self-control in all areas of my life, my calculations are not enough to merit or replace His grace.  Neither are my miscalculated or un-calculated moments enough to cut me off from his grace. 

The calculated life can be an exhausted life. Or it can also be a grace-infused and grace-sustained life.

Grace doesn’t shy away from hard work; it presses into it. God’s grace gives me the passion for hard work and the energy to work hard. “Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.” (Dallas Willard)

Paul said, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” (1 Corinthians 15:10) And, yet, God’s grace worked mightily in Paul, because Paul knew he was mightily weak. “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10) So God could look on Paul, a man that by all calculations lived a calculated life, and say, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:8)

Do not be crushed by the calculated life, by your failure to live up to it. Do live a calculated life, a disciplined life, a self-controlled life. But do so knowing you’re not perfect, you won’t be, you can’t be. And in those moments of failing and falling short, give yourself to the grace of God —to the God of all grace. Because, in fact, grace comes to us not in our striving after perfection but in our running after God.