The thought from above in this episode is: “You don’t have to make it happen.” In the summer of his junior year, James attended an elite basketball camp where he learned a very valuable lesson about the grace of God.

At the end of the camp was an all-star game that you had to be selected by the staff to play in. James goal at camp was to make the all-star team and be the M.V.P. in the all-star game. Before the game, the coach gave a speech titled “If it is to be, it’s up to me.”

The whole point of the talk was this: you, and only you, are the one who makes it happen. You are the one who determines your future, your destiny.

In the world of self-help slogans, it is a pretty good one. It is the kind of slogan, or mantra, one can say each morning, and perhaps several times a day, to motivate yourself.

It is appealing because there is a part of us that really likes control, that likes to be at the center. Telling ourselves that we are the ones who makes it all happen is not only motivational, but actually a little narcissistic.

Smith will agree that there is truth in the slogan, but it does fail when it comes to living the life “from above” as he likes to say.

Think about some of the most important things about our lives. How about our redemption, our forgiveness, and our new birth in Christ? We had nothing to do with those incredible aspects of our lives.

Those are all acts of grace. Grace means gift, from the greek word, charis. God in Christ redeemed us, forgave us, reconciled us, and gave us new life, life from above. All we did was to accept these gifts, which is no merit on our part. We even needed god’s grace to accept those gifts.

James closes the episode with a story about Dallas Willard and ends with a verse from 1st Corinthians.

“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. no, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Cor. 15:10)