Anxious? Burnt out? Weary? Why is it so hard for our souls to find rest?
In Searching for Grace, Russ and his mentor, Scotty Smith, explore the contours of their lives and why embracing God's grace unreservedly is so difficult for many of us. Their honest conversations offer priceless lessons for parched souls everywhere.
Many of us feel anxious and unfulfilled by our everyday existence, yet deeply long for a purposeful, meaningful, and peace-filled life. That tension creates a background buzz of profound discontentment behind everything we do. There is a better way. Searching for Grace reveals the conversations between Russ and Scotty that transformed Russ's life forever, helping him identify the mindsets that contributed to his restlessness. Straight from his little black journal, Russ shares the seven life-giving principles he learned from Scotty that unleashed him to a refreshingly new life, radically built on God's grace. Why is it so hard for our souls to find rest?
In Searching for Grace, Russ and his mentor, Scotty, explore the contours of their lives and why wholeheartedly embracing God's grace is so difficult. Their honest conversations offer priceless lessons for parched souls everywhere. My first conversation with Scotty was on a long, narrow porch in the North Georgia mountains. The porch was filled with rocking chairs and was attached to a barn. Men sat scattered around, talking about SEC football, theology, and the life they had retreated from to take in some rare moments of quiet. . . .
Just thirty minutes before, I'd perched high in the loft of the barn listening to Scotty teach the group of men sitting in camp chairs and hammocks while a fresh breeze filled the loft from the outside twilight.
Fifty men had come here to sleep under the stars, to cast a fishing line or fire a gun, to listen and learn, to make a friend and share a conversation. I was there as one of the leaders, the pastor of twenty men attending from our young church. I was also there as a participant.
I was a thirty-five-year-old pastor silently attempting to keep my life under control.
Physically I was a whole person sitting in that barn, but my interior life was frazzled, and I was unsure if I could put myself together—or be put back together at all. Two questions were pulsing in me:
How did I get here?
How does this get better?
