April 26, 2026

Today the church is asking what grace actually is — and whether we've quietly replaced it with something more manageable. The Aquila Report runs a piece with the blunt headline: God's grace isn't something you give yourself. The piece pushes back on the cultural habit of turning grace into a self-soothing tool, something you dispense to yourself after a hard week. A companion piece from the same outlet says Christ's mercy meets our deepest shame — not our inconveniences. Taken together, they're saying the same thing: we've domesticated grace. The Gospel Coalition is also out this week on fear and witnessing, which lands differently in that context. If grace is real — not self-generated, not managed, but received — it changes what we have to offer when we open our mouths to someone who doesn't know Christ.

Christianity Today profiles Nigerian theologian Sunday Agang, whose kidnapping by Fulani militants reshaped both his faith and his ministry. It's a hard story. And it sits in strange tension with the advice piece over at Relevant Magazine — readers telling 21-year-olds what they wish they'd known. Nothing wrong with that. But Agang's story is the kind of formation that doesn't fit in a listicle. World Magazine has a podcast episode on David Nasser — born in Iran, shaped by revolution, now ministering in America — another life where faith was pressure-tested rather than advised. That question of what actually forms a person has been running through this feed for weeks. On March 27 the conversation was about sanctification and whether transformation is real, how it happens, and what it costs. Agang and Nasser are case studies. The answer is not pretty, and it's not self-given.