Seven Steps to Nothing

A recent Barna study found that people's most important personal relationship is not with God, but with family. In fact, God and Jesus weren't even close to number one. Surprising?

“We love to remember Jesus at Christmas and Easter,” says Elyse Fitzpatrick, author of Because He Loves Me. “We adore him as the baby in the manager; we rejoice over the empty tomb. But aside from these two seasons, our attention is primarily focused on us, on our performance, on our spiritual growth. We know that the incarnation and resurrection are important truths to our initial salvation, but that's pretty much where the impact ends.”

Fitzpatrick, who has nearly twenty years of experience in biblical counseling, believes that many Christians have turned their faith into a checklist and forgotten about the overwhelming love of God in Christ. “If you neglect to focus on God's love for you in Christ, your Christianity will soon be reduced to a program of self improvement— just one of many methods to help you “get your act together,”” says Fitzpatrick.

“And although that might seem like a worthy goal, it isn't true Christianity at all. True Christianity is not a program of self-improvement; it's an acknowledgment that something more than self-improvement is needed.” In Because He Loves Me, Fitzpatrick encourages believers to return to the gospel to understand how God's love transforms our identity and ultimately our life.

Fitzpatrick believes that if we remembered that because of God's love, Christ is our life, it would transform the day-to-day realities of our life, from dealing with our sin to understanding how to handle difficult situations.”