Meat hammer or marinade?

What's your preferred method of tenderizing meat? Marinade or the hammer? Many admit enjoying the hammer because of its stress-relieving properties. Yet both yield a more tender meat, effectively conforming the meat into a tasty meal. 

Life's seasons can fluctuate between circumstances much like the meat tenderizer and other times like a slow, pleasant-smelling marinate. The Master Chef uses both to create wonderful transformations. 

However, there's a cheap imitation meat hammer that I picked up somewhere on my journey. In my efforts to please God, I repeatedly try to hammer righteousness into every fiber of my being. Being a people-pleaser is NOT helpful, because I'm trying to make people and God happy. 

Sounds so ridiculous on paper, but I am not alone in this struggle. Even zealous Pharisees bought the lie, and the church in Galatia did, too. With the benefit of God's Word, I know theologically that self-righteousness is no righteousness at all; otherwise the law would've been enough. Still, I have such a hard time simply trusting that God's marinade - Jesus' blood - is enough. 

It was enough to save me. 

"So then [God's gift] is not a question of human will and human effort, but of God's mercy. [It depends not on one's own willingness nor on his strenuous exertion as in running a race, but on God's having mercy on him.]" Romans 9:16 Amplified, NIV, & NASB


It is enough to change me. 
"Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" Galatians 3:3, NASB

Change is a RESULT of what Jesus already did, mixed together with my willingness to trust Him fully. This yields to the rest, peace, and joy I seek. HE changes water to wine; HE transforms me; HE holds me together. 

Maybe it's time for me to trade in my spiritual meat tenderizer...  

Abba, I really want to lay down this worthless hammer I've been using all these years, but my fears have created some sort of epoxy bonding the self-condemnation to my soul. I do not know how to lay it down - or how to drum up more faith - but YOU do. Help me in my unbelief, and cause me to grasp the reality that I am already acceptable to You, because of the power of Jesus' blood. Convict me daily to focus on YOU instead of my circumstances. In Jesus' name.