About Living On Grace
Every emotion you carry already has scripture written for it.
Living On Grace exists to close the distance between what you feel and what was written for that feeling thousands of years ago.
Why it exists
There are health apps for every part of your body. There wasn't one for your spirit.
You track your sleep. You track your steps. When something is physically wrong, there is an app that helps you understand it. But when you are carrying grief, or anxiety, or a quiet heaviness that has no name, the spiritual tools available were either too long, too gamified, or too disconnected from where you actually were.
The Psalms already know. They cover rage, despair, accusation, silence, gratitude, and return. The Bible has already anticipated what you are carrying. Living On Grace closes the distance between your feeling and the scripture written for exactly that moment.
How it works
Three steps. Forty seconds.
Check in with how you feel
Tell Living On Grace how your soul feels today. You do not need the exact word. You just need to be honest.
Receive scripture for that feeling
The app matches your mood to scripture written for exactly that emotional state. Not a generic verse. The right verse.
Sit with it
Read slowly. Add a reflection if you want to. Put your phone down. That is the whole session.
Product principles
What every feature proposal is measured against.
Protect the core loop
Mood check-in. Verse. Done. Every feature is evaluated against whether it makes this loop faster, calmer, and more accurate. If it adds steps or cognitive load, it works against the product.
Anti-features are features
No streaks. No social feed. No leaderboard. No premium tier. These absences are deliberate. The market does not need another all-in-one spiritual platform.
The return experience is the product
Retention is not consecutive days. It is whether someone comes back after a gap. Someone who returns after two months deserves the same welcome as someone who comes back after two hours.
The right verse, not a random one
When someone checks in as "heavy," they must receive a lament Psalm, not a prosperity verse. The quality of that match is the whole product.
Privacy is a prerequisite
Reflections about anxiety, marriage, or loneliness are among the most intimate data a person can generate. That data stays on your device unless you choose otherwise.
Free means free
No premium tier. No paywalls. No ads. No upsells. The person checking in at 2 AM on a cracked phone screen gets the same experience as anyone else.
Non-negotiable
These have no expiration dates.
No revenue thresholds. No "unless we need to" clauses. If Living On Grace ever breaks one of these, the project has failed at the thing that matters most.
- 01Every feature is free. No premium tier. No paywalls. No trials.
- 02No ads. Not now. Not later. Not "just in the free version."
- 03No data monetization. Reflections are not products.
- 04No streak counters, badges, points, or gamification of any kind.
- 05No account required to use the product.
- 06Reflections stay on-device unless the user explicitly opts into sync.
- 07The user can export all their data at any time.
- 08The user can delete all their data at any time, irreversibly.
- 09Works offline. Connection is never required for core functionality.
- 10Open source (MIT). The code stays public.
The founder
Jackson Makinda
Jackson is a product designer and developer based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He built Living On Grace after spending too many evenings searching for a verse that matched how he was feeling, and finding that most tools assumed you already knew what you were looking for.
The project is open source, built in public, and funded by no one. Jackson builds it in his spare time because it is the tool he needed and could not find.
Living On Grace is open source.
MIT licensed. The code is public. Contributions are welcome.