Grace In Hard Times (Episode 2 - Archive)

Grace In Hard Times (Episode 2 - Archive)

What can we learn from those who have battled addiction? This conversation from Relational Recovery leans into that question by wrestling honestly with grace, performance, and faith in hard seasons. Host Wes Thompson and co-host Austin Hill talk candidly about their own pull towards performance – doing the right religious things, trying to be “good people”, and showing kindness because it’s what they feel they should do.

Wes names the tension bluntly: he’s realised he “can’t divorce the behaviour from the relationship”, meaning that efforts to be gracious fall flat if they’re not fuelled by actually receiving God’s grace first. Austin shares how this idea used to trigger shame, as if every past attempt at showing grace was pointless because it wasn’t perfectly rooted in the “right” order.

He pushes back on that fear by holding onto a different picture of God: “our God is a God of abundance, he’s not a God of scarcity.” Even “poorly placed, even performative grace has a hint and a glimpse of God’s grace in it”, they say, because people can still experience good from imperfect people. Instead of a harsh either/or, they describe grace as a gradual process, layered and ongoing rather than a lightning-bolt moment.

Accepting God’s grace becomes more like building a muscle over time – something that grows, stretches and keeps revealing new depths. For anyone in recovery who’s tired of trying to perform their way into being a “better person”, that’s a pretty gentle relief.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your clumsy attempts at kindness, sobriety, or change even count, this conversation might help you see those efforts in a new light and remind you that grace, like a good workout, is something you can keep growing into. Where might you be underestimating the grace already at work in your own story?