The Joy of Acceptance

My previous message, "Biblical Remedy for Rejection" ends with these words concerning what God had done at the cross: "The barrier between God and man had been removed. The way was opened for man to come to God without shame, without guilt and without fear. Jesus took our rejection so that we might experience His acceptance!"

Let us seach the Scripture and find out what a joy it is to be accepted into God's family. Bear in mind that I am not talking about the Local Church. What we are talking about is a section the Universal Church which will be Bride of Christ. In this sense, we need to realize that there is no family quite equal to the family of God. Even if your own family did not care for you, your own father rejected you, your mother never had time for you, or your husband never show you love, bear in mind that God wants you. You are accepted; you are highly favored; you are the object of His special care and affection. Everything He does in the universe revolves around you.

God as our Father

Before His crucifixion, Jesus' last prayer with His disciples was for those who followed Him then as well as for those who would follow afterward. If you ar a disciple of Christ then the answer of this prayer will work in your life (John 17:20).

This prayer concerned our relationship with God as our Father and ended this way:

"O righteous Father! The world has not know You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. And I have declared to them You Name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:25, 26, NKJV, emphasis added).

Notice that Jesus made God known to us as Father. The Jews had known God as Yahweh for fourteen centuries, but the only person who could introduce Him as Father was His Son.

I believe Verse 26 (emphasized) means that because Jesus is in us, God has exactly the same love for us as He has for Jesus. We are as dear to God as Jesus Himself is. However, there is also another aspect to this. Because Jesus is in us, we can love God in the same way that Jesus loves Him.

This represents the ultimate purpose of the earthly ministry of Jesus: to bring us into the same love relationship that exists between the Father and the Son. This has two aspects: not only does the Father have the same love for us that He has for Jesus, but also we can reciprocate with the same love for the Father that Jesus has.

John said, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, ..." (1 John 4:18, NKJV).

As we develop this love relationship with God, it leaves no room for guilt, for insecurity, or for rejection.

Perhaps you have unhappy memories of a human father. God intended every father to demonstrate what He Himself is, but many fathers have failed. Yet you still have a heavenly Father who loves you, who understands you, who thinks the best of you, and who plans the best for you. He will never abandon you, never misunderstand you, never take sides against you; nor will He ever reject you.

From rejection to acceptance

Let us consider wha appropriate steps to take as we travel the road from rejection to acceptance:

1. Be honest to yourself; admitting that you are wounded and have a problem of rejection. God always has to bring us to the moment of truth, even though it may seem devastating and extremely painful, before we can receive His help.

2. Forgive the one who had wounded you. You need to take Jesus as your pattern.

Peter said, "For to this you were called, because Christ also suffer for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps ..." (1 Peter 2:21, NKJV).

How Jesus met rejection? In many ways. The people chose to release Barabbas, a criminal and crucified Jesus instead (Luke 23:13 - 25). In response, Jesus prayed for those who crucified Him.

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do" (Luke 23:34).

This is not an easy thing to do. We need the Holy Spirit to give us the supernatural grace to forgive those who had hurt and wounded us.

If the source of your wound is your father you must follow the only Commandment with a promise:

"Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you" (Deut. 5:16, NIV).

You can be sure of this: if you do not honor your parents, your life will never go well; but if you do, God will favor you with a long, blessed life (see also Ephesians 6:2, 3). It make no difference what your father is (perhaps an alcoholic) you must still honor him. You do not honor him as an alcoholic, but as your father.

3. Make a conscious decision to get rid of the bad fruit that rejection has produced in your life - such as bitterness, resentment, hatred, and rebellion. If you nourish them in your heart, they will poison your whole life. They will cause you deep emotional problems and quite likely physical problems also. If your father (whether he is dead or alive) was the source your wound then you must make a conscious effort to forgive him.

4. Believe God has already accepted you and so receive what God has already done for you.

Paul said, "God has made us accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6, emphasis added).

When you come to God through Jesus, you discover that you are already accepted. God has no second-class children. He does not just tolerate you. He loves you. He is interested in you and He cares for you. God's purpose from eternity was to make us His children, which He accomplished through the death of Jesus for us on the cross (Eph. 1:4, 5). The only thing you need to do is to believe that God wants you to be His child. When you come to God through Jesus, He has already accepted you.

5. Accept yourself. Sometimes this is the hardest thing to do. You can (and must) accept yourself because God has accepted you. If you don't then you are found rebellious in the eyes of God.

When you come to God in Jesus, you become a new creation:

Paul said, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Cor. 5:17, NKJV).

You can no longer evaluate yourself on the basis of the way you lived before you come to Christ, because you have become a new creation since then. Now, your only true standard of self-evaluation is what God says about who you have become in Jesus. As you repeatedly declare who you are in Christ according to God's Word, you will begin to override the old, negative self-talk and learn to accept yourself.

Finding acceptance by God's people

Just to know that God has already accepted you, without condition, is not enough. The next thing to do is to discover your place in the body of Christ. As Christianss, we are never isolated individuals. We are brought into a relationship with our fellow believers. That relationship is one of the ways in which our accptance is worked out in our day-to-day living. Acceptance by our Father in heaven is the first step and the most important. However, acceptance also has to find expression in our relatioships with our fellow believers. Christians collectively constitute one body, with each Christian a member of that body.

Paul said, "For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another" (Romans 12:4, 5).

Since we are members of one body, and each of us belongs to all the others, we can never find full satisfaction, peace, or acceptance apart from the other members. We all need one another. God created the body so that the members are interdependent (read 1 Cor. 12:14 - 16; 21 - 23). None of us can function effectively alone. You need other members, and they need you. Finding your places in the body will make your acceptance a real day-to-day experience.

The Lord's Prayer begins with: "Our Father" (Matt. 6:9). This tells us two things. First, we have a Father who is God. That means we are accepted vertically by God. But the first word is "our" and not "my", which tells us that we are members of a family, with a lot of other children in that family. Our acceptance becomes effective horizontally only when we find and fit into our place in the family. Therefore, we find vertical acceptance with God and horizontal acceptance in God's family.

Paul said, "Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (Eph. 2:19, emphasis added).

The psalmist said: "God sets the soltary in families; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity; but the rebellious dwell in a dry land" (Ps. 68:6, NKJV).

God's purpose is to bring you, who are lonely, into a family. In doing so, He breaks the chains that bind you, and He brings you into happiness (prosperity). Only people who refuse God's leadership have to dwell in a dry land (speaks of rejection).

The flow of divine love

It is true that rejection is one of the greatest hindrances to divine love. The reason being, as we discovered in my previous message, the primary result of rejection is the inability to receive love from others and to communicate love to them. Acceptance is just the opposite - we can communicate love to others. God's love first flows into us and then out through us to the world at large. In other words, we are the channels by which God's love flow to touch lives in the dark world.

Two phases of divine love

The flow of God's love consists of two successive phases. First, God's love is "outpoured"; then God's love is "outwork". The first phase is a tremendous supernatural experience; the second is the gradual, progressive formation of godly character.

1. Supernatural experience of God's love

Paul said, "Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:5).

When you are baptized in the Holy Spirit (Paul's epistles were written to Spirit baptized believers) hope is never disappointed when it is fixed in God because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts - the totality of God's love. God withholds nothing. He just turn the "bucket" upside down and pours out the whole thing when He gives us the Holy Spirit.

2. Formation of Godly characters

A supernatural experience of the outpoured love of God is wonderful, but much more needs to be done to form our characters. God has to take us beyond the supernatural outpouring of love to the formation of a character that consistently expresses His love. That is a process, a long process, and it requires God's patience to take us through it.

John said, "He who says, 'I know Him,' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in Him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked" (1 John 2:4 - 6. NKJV, emphasis added).

The phrase: "whoever keeps His word" means "whoever consistently obeys His word." If we faithfully follow Christ's guidance by walking as He did in obedience to the Scriptures, God's love will gradually be brought to completion, or maturity, in us.

Peter said: "But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love" (2 Peter 1:5 - 7, NKJV, emphasis added).

Here Peter gives the seven successive phases in the process of character building. Notice that there are seven successive steps to divine love. The starting point with everything God does is faith. There is no other place to begin. But after God has given us faith, there has to be a process of character development. Here are the seven successive steps:

1. Virtue - It means "excellence." Excellence is the mark of a true Christian. If you were a janitor before you were saved, be a better janitor afterward. If you were a teacher before, be a better teacher afterward. We must add excellence to our faith.

2. Knowledge - Primarily, this means the knowledge of God's will and the knowledge of His Word. Secular knowledge is often important to acquire, especially in developing the necessary skills for your vocation, but even more important is learning what God's will is for your life in every circumstance which can be discovered by thoroughly studying His Word.

3. Self-control - There is a point beyond which you cannot go in character development if you do not learn to control yourself, your emotion, your words, your appetites, and all the things that motivate you.

4. Perseverance - Stick it out! Again, there is a point beyond which you will never advance if you do not learn to persevere. Otherwise, every time you are about to attain the next stage of development, you will give up.

5. Godliness - Godliness or holiness is developed by allowing the Holy Spirit to control your temperament and every aspect of your being.

6. Brotherly kindness - Brotherly kindness or "love for one another" is our testimony to the world. Jesus said, "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35, NKJV).

7. Love - Divine, agape love. This is the ideal and perfect kind of love that God has for us. The difference between brotherly love and divine love is that in brotherly love, we love our fellow Christians who love us; in divine love, we love those who hate us, persecute us, and are altogether unloving and unlovable.

With a developed Godly character you can become a vessel of God's love to others who have been wounded just as you were. That is the joy of acceptance!