07/10/2026
Realising God’s love for you can often feel like Harry Potter finding out he was a wizard. It’s so easy to think “But I’m just me”, and give all the reasons why you shouldn’t be so deeply and intimately loved. God is desperate for you to accept this invitation, but it’s no ordinary one. Harry could’ve accepted the invitation to Hogwarts, found out he was famous and that he had a lot of money passed down to him, and coasted through life, but he didn’t. The reason given for Harry’s rescue was that he showed loyalty to Dumbledore, but if you flip that on its head, the reason that Harry showed such loyalty to Dumbledore was because he had such love and respect for him. Looking at it this way, we could take a similar look at our justification by grace through Christ. Some people may look at answered prayer, for example, as thinking that because someone goes to church, gives money to charity, and is generally considered a ‘good’ person, as the reason why God likes them so much and seems to give them what they want. Such thinking can be extremely harmful and lead to people thinking that by trying as hard as you can, using all your willpower to be the best person you can possibly be, we can earn our way into God’s good books. This is not how it works. No one is a ‘good’ person, even Jesus says in Luke 18:19 ‘“Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “Only God is truly good.”’ In God’s eyes, we are all sinful, and no matter how hard you try, how many good deeds you do, it is impossible to earn our way past this. That’s what makes Christ’s sacrifice so beautiful - because of His death, and only because of His death and sacrifice, are we able to come before God. The person who has their prayer answered does not get what they want because they are ‘good’, but in their hour of need, when they are weakest, they make the choice to put their trust in God. They let their love for God overshadow their fear of what’s going on around them. God doesn’t see their past actions, good or bad, He sees their heart and where their loyalty lies. (taken from "Maybe you’re not meant to be strong", © 2026 Bradley Leighton, Substack, Sep 9)