What motivates you to serve Christ? Is it a sense of nagging obligation as you struggle to achieve a host of impossible targets? Or is it a heart full of joy?

God's grace is neither earned nor deserved. We receive grace, and with it the blessings of forgiveness, peace, hope, security, rescue, reconciliation and eternal life. God's grace needs no additions, no subtractions.

Yet it's so easy, so tempting, like the Galatians in the New Testament, to slip back into a legalistic mindset. We want to build on what God has done; we want to make ourselves more attractive and acceptable.

Marcus Honeysett challenges us to live as sons and daughters of God, not as slaves. He helps us to understand the law and its place in the Old and New Testaments. He accompanies us as we go joy-spotting in Philippians.

Joy should be the hallmark of our Christian service. Understanding God's grace is the foundation to releasing that joy.