God's Acceptance
Illustrating a Truth of Accepted in the Beloved and Love Thyself!
God's acceptance of those who are in Christ is so complete that He is always ready to meet us right where we are and just as we are with the embrace of His perfect love. This is wonderful! Think how utterly impossible it would be to get yourself into a perfect state every time you needed to meet with God or call on Him for help. We can't even get perfect when all conditions are in our favor. Besides, most of us need the Lord the most when our condition is far from perfect. How hopeless life would be if He insisted on us making the first move.
Fortunately, God foresaw how great our need would be and how appallingly pitiful our merit would be. So, our Father did the unthinkable to make us acceptable: He punished an innocent Man for all our crimes against Him. We are now--by faith and grace--made over into new creations who are always completely acceptable to Him. Can anyone say, Thank You God!
The only problem is with us. We are all-too-often not willing to meet with Him on the same basis. It's hard to accept ourselves just as we are, right where we are. We want out first! We want change first! "Change me or change my circumstances, then I can accept my life. Otherwise, no deal. I won't accept your offer of peace and presence in this moment. I'll just stay frustrated with myself, thank You." Sound familiar?
Sometimes, our reluctance to meet with God in the present moment is because we have a hard time trusting that God really does love us just as we are. These unbelieving feelings are often rooted in the very real rejections we have experienced from others and even from ourselves.
The way back to close communion with God is to fully forgive those who have rejected us, fully accept ourselves just as He does, release all past feelings of rejection, and embrace this liberating truth of our total acceptance by Him. God made up His mind about us long before we were born: It's time we did too!
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 ESV
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ... According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world... Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself... wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Ephesians 1:3-6 KJV
Prayer
Father, You are so good at loving and accepting me! Thank You for all that Jesus did to clear the way for Your love to reach me and that I can "come boldly" to Your throne of grace for mercy and help at a moment's notice. Please enable me to become really proficient at turning to You, releasing my hurts and fears, and allowing Your perfect acceptance of me to liberate my heart so that I can get a fresh start with You anytime I need it!
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