When Strivings Cease

As soon as I finished reading When Strivings Cease by Ruth Chou Simons I knew that it would be my next book for Sunday Reading. It was a fairly quick, but very thought-provoking read.

If you are a new reader, Sunday Reading is where I feature a Christian book once a month. Or about once a month.

I always share them on a Sunday and I always call them Sunday Reading so that it will be clear what type of book it is.

I love the fact that I have a wide range of readers because my family reads a wide range of books.

Some of my readers love to read fiction. Some love to read nonfiction and history. Others love my reviews of Christian books. I love that I can share all of those types of books and more with you.

Now for Sunday Reading.

Most of us, if not all of us, struggle with perfectionism in some way or another.

Our human nature tends to want the perfect life. We want to accomplish great things. We want people to like us. It is probably more accurate to say that we want people to love us, not just like us.

But are those things worthy and good? Do all those things matter in the bigger picture?

The reality is that they do not. Striving to please man will never satisfy us. It will leave us empty and void.

Our goals and accomplishments only matter when they are lived for Christ.

Our strivings must cease to fully serve God.

By sharing her story, Ruth Chou Simons reminds us that our strivings must cease.

The subtitle of this book, replacing the gospel of self-improvement with the gospel of life-transforming grace, describes this book well. 

I am familiar with who Ruth Chou Simons is, but this is the first book of hers that I have read. It was the perfect book to read after Becoming Free Indeed. 

In When Strivings Cease, Ruth shares her story of growing up as a Taiwanese immigrant struggling to fit in between two cultures. The first half of the book is a lot of her story, which I enjoyed, but the second half of the book is the part I loved.

We live in a culture where looks and things matter. We are faced constantly with perfect images and what appear to be perfect lives, but those standards are man-made standards, not God’s standards. 

Ruth Chou Simons reminds us that we will never be enough, but God is enough. We will never be perfect on our own, but through God, we find grace and righteousness. Through Him, we are saved. 

Hard work is good. Hard work for the wrong reasons is not. 

I also love how she reminds us that although we are surrounded by the message that we can rescue ourselves and make our lives become what we want them to be, the reality is we can’t. 

Life will never be perfect. It will be full of ups and downs. It will be full of heartaches and hardships. 

I love her quote on page 183. 

“ The good life isn’t the absence of heartache; it’s the presence of God, by grace, in the midst of it. “ 

Oh, how true that is!

We need to transform our self-serving self-striving with a life of transforming grace and living for God. 

When Strivings Cease is a book that I think we can all benefit from!