“God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.” This was the kind of scripture I would not do without, especially when I wanted to really pin people down based on what they hadn’t done in order to be accepted by God. Anything that made people feel inadequate and inferior was like a great revelation that I often shared.

Struggling to be worthy

What humbleness meant to me was all about how it looked from the outward. What grace meant to me was so limited; it was just about...