Grace & Faith

Continued to read Future Grace yesterday by John Piper, and as I was praying, I began to understand something. Sometimes it is so hard to balance grace and good works, and Piper said that salvation was not based on our good works..BUT, it was conditional upon faith. Been reading and haven't really been getting it until yesterday, I understood what it meant. As I looked back at many periods in my life, my sin was not that I had not done enough, loved enough or reach out enough, but rather my sin was I did not have faith enough in God. What displeases God? Hebrews tells us that without faith it is impossible to please Him. God was angry with the Israelites because they kept complaining instead of trusting in Him. Doing things by our own strength leads us to be tired and worn out. And trying hard to be a good christian to justify our salvation=pride= we can work out our salavtion ourselves.
Picture this...a father and a son...the son fell down and is bleeding...the dad wants to pick him up and give him a big hug and clean up his wounds. The dad helping the son is conditional upon that the son allows the dad to do that! But if the son insists on limping about and finding his own solution, there's nothing the dad can do. Yet-this grace is not earned...because the son simply needs to ask the dad for help, and acknowledge that he needs his help.
Ofcos..sometimes God's grace is so sovereign, that even us w/o faith, He still pours forth His grace upon our lives.