We live in a world of transactions. You work, you get paid. You study, you get good grades. You're nice to people, they're nice to you. Everything is earned. Everything is deserved. Everything is based on what you've accomplished or contributed. So we often bring that same mindset into our relationship with God and assume salvation works the same way.

We think we need to be good enough. We think we need to pray enough, serve enough, believe enough, do enough to earn God's approval. We believe grace is something we receive only after we've proven ourselves worthy. And we spend our entire lives trying to tip the scales in our favor, to do enough good to outweigh the bad, and to make ourselves acceptable to a holy God.

But that's not grace. That's works. And it will exhaust you.

You can be in a room full of people and still feel utterly, devastatingly alone.

I know this because I've been there. Surrounded by voices and laughter, yet feeling invisible. Present at the table, yet somehow on the outside looking in. Smiling and nodding while your heart screams, "Does anyone really see me? Does anyone really know what I'm going through?"

Loneliness is one of those struggles Christians rarely discuss openly. We're supposed to have community, the church, and be surrounded by brothers and sisters in Christ who care about us and walk alongside us. And yes, that's beautiful when it happens. But what about when it doesn't? What about when you're sitting in a pew next to dozens of believers and have never felt more alone in your life?

The Christian community has often responded to loneliness with a Band-Aid solution: “Just serve more.”

When I was a child, my family played a game called "Don't Tip the Waiter." A cardboard waiter, balanced on a swinging base, held a tray over his head. We took turns piling tiny cardboard food tokens onto the tray. The goal was to add one more without sending the whole thing crashing to the floor. There was a pork chop token, a pie token, and I think a very questionable cardboard fish. Someone always groaned, someone always gloated, and someone always had to crawl under the table to find the pie.

It was great fun until recently when I became the waiter. Now, not so much!

For the past couple of months, life has been handing me tokens. Here's an obligation. Have a little sickness. This circumstance is for you, and here's a second helping of the same one. I have watched that tray pile up and thought, Well, this is it. Somebody call the cleanup crew. Yet here I am, still upright.

All my life, I've been a tortoise.

I'm slow. When I do something, I do it carefully, methodically, and with extreme attention to detail. I'm not fast at anything, and I never have been. In middle school, I earned the nickname "Dead Stop." A teacher gave me that one. (Nothing says "bless your heart" like a faculty-approved nickname.)

But a strange thing happens when my schedule fills up and the demands start stacking like dirty dishes. Suddenly, I think I'm a hare. My body is still a tortoise, and my mindset is still slow and steady. Yet I feel I must zip around like the Road Runner, because surely that's the only way everything will get done. Beep beep!

On those mornings, my prayer goes something like this:

"Lord, I have so much to do today, but I know I don't have to do it alone. You are my strength. My times are in Your hands.

"LORD, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah." (Psalm 3:1-2)

David wrote Psalm 3 while running for his life from his own son. Absalom had stolen the hearts of the people and then the kingdom itself. David was terrified, heartbroken, and worn thin. When he spoke those first two verses, I think he meant more than the people against him. I believe he also meant his emotions, his circumstances, and the weight of everyone who had fled with him and now needed him to hold it together.

I can't say I understand being betrayed like that. But I understand the pile-on that followed. Here's a peek at what has “troubled me” and "risen up against me" lately:

If I were Jacob, I'd be grumpy. His brother wants him dead (not that he didn't bring that on himself). He's left home with little more than a walking stick, and the sun has gone down in the middle of nowhere. There's no inn and no pillow. So he does what any desperate traveler would do and grabs a rock. Comfy, huh? Genesis 28:11 says he put the stones "for his pillows." Plural. Rocks everywhere, and not a memory-foam mattress in sight.

Then comes the dream. A ladder stands on the earth with its top reaching to heaven. Angels go up and down like rush hour at a holy train station. At the top stands the LORD Himself, who makes Jacob a promise:

"And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest... for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." (Genesis 28:15)

I'll admit something. For years, I pictured the Christian race as a Sunday-afternoon jog. I saw myself in cute sneakers with a gentle breeze in my hair, waving at the neighbors and admiring the scenery. "It's a marathon, not a sprint," I'd say, as if a marathon were just a sprint with better snacks.

Then I looked up the Greek word for "race" in Hebrews 12:1, and my smoothie hit the pavement.

The word is agōn, and yes, it's where we get "agony." It was the word for the contests held in the great stadiums, where athletes strained, gasped, and gave everything they had. The word carries the idea of struggle and conflict. Nobody in that arena was admiring the scenery.

We love the race verse. We put it on mugs and bookmarks. But we rarely talk about what it's like to run it on mile nineteen, with a blister, a headache, and a to-do list that's grown legs.

Over the years, I've heard some strange things from the pulpit. Not merely differences in preference, mind you, but teachings built on assumptions, verses taken out of context, or ideas not found in the Bible at all. Yes, I've sat through many sermons squirming in my seat (and not just because of my back pain) and biting my tongue because the eloquent and educated speaker sounded good, but what he was saying simply wasn't biblical.

Now, before anyone sharpens a pitchfork, let me be clear: preachers, teachers, speakers, and Christian writers are human. We make mistakes. I know I have. I have taught or written things in the past that I believed were correct, but further study showed me I missed the mark. That is humbling. It's also slightly inconvenient when you've put the mistake in print for all the world to see. Yikes!

That is exactly why I regularly tell my readers and Bible-study students, "Check up on me."

I had the calendar memorized, not because I wanted to, but because every time I glanced at it, my heart picked up speed and my stomach tied itself into a sailor's knot.

First, a team meeting. Then a harvest service, meaning extra time on church pews, those lovely wooden torture devices designed by someone who clearly never had a back issue. Then Sunday: out the door at 8:00 a.m., two and a half hours of travel, a full day of services, and the drive home, rolling in after 8:00 p.m. Then another harvest service, more pews, and another weekend away with another long drive, an overnight stay, and yes, more pews.

Meanwhile, life refused to take a vacation. The dog still needed walking. The dishes still multiplied like rabbits. Paperwork needed filing, devotions needed writing, and events needed planning. I had been dreading it for weeks. I told myself not to, and I really tried. But my nerves, apparently, didn't get the memo.