ACCEPTANCE – THE NEGATIVE AND THE POSITIVE!
We have used this or similar definition of acceptance for 15 years or more. Here it is: Receiving another person willingly and unconditionally especially when the other’s behavior has been imperfect. Being willing to continue caring for another in spite of offenses and differences.
I am serious when I ask this question: Has there ever been anyone in your life who has loved you and cared for you on your worst days especially if there have been several “worst days” in succession….like for months or years? You know who these people are, if you have such people in your life, don’t you?
Maybe we should ask it another way: To whom did you turn after those “worst days” had stopped or subsided long enough for you to realize how faithless or wrong you had been? Was that person to whom you turned the one you had hurt the most by your “worst days” living? Sometimes we human beings are more like brute animals in the thoughtless hurt we cause.
I wish I could say I had never done that, but I cannot. Oh, I could, but I would be lying. The person to whom I have returned over and over again to ask for forgiveness for my attitudes and actions is my best friend, my wife Carol. See that couple in the picture above? They picture the way Carol and I interact much of the time. No kidding, they do. ( The only one who is still the “beautiful person” in the picture would be Carol. I married way over my head. She still looks younger, and I am older, grayer (actually white-haired according to my grandchildren), and too big.)
Now with 49 years of marriage, I am realizing how much of the time when the smiles were absent and frowns took over resulted from my attitudes of selfishness, putting my wants above her needs, or simply settling for attitudes of neutrality when God wanted me to be passionately positive toward her. She is and always has been a gift from God. She has forgiven me more than 70 times 7.
Why am I telling you this? I want you to know that more often now than ever before, I feel the need of Acceptance being met by my wife. It isn’t that she was not meeting it before; but I was not always in a good position to realize and appreciate it. She would admit, and so now do I, that God’s Holy Spirit living in her and in me is the hero in the story. God has accepted me because I am now IN Christ and He IN me. (Colossians 1:27) Holy Spirit’s presence is my obvious sign of God’s acceptance of me. He accepted me first. He accepted Carol too.
When I look back to track God’s work in my life, I see that He pursued me, He loved me first, He called me to Himself, He revealed salvation in Christ to me over and over again. I am accepted on the basis of God’s good grace working in conjunction with faith. How about that?
Knowing that I am accepted by God and loved by Him, destined to be with Him forever through forgiven sin and acceptance into His family as a brother to Jesus and joint-heir with Christ, I have a much easier time accepting others when they, including Carol, disappoint me. Instead of having to try and make sure I am “better than they” or would be considered the “good guy”, I can accept the fact that only Jesus is good. In Christ I am no better and no worse than others. I am simply 100% in need of God’s love and provision 100% of the time….just as everyone else.
And, that feels great because even in that condition, I am a loved and accepted man. It is really nice when I get to feel accepted by others – family / friends; and it gets even better when I can accept others as they are and love them even if they never change. They can hurt me, but they can’t make me stop loving them. Sounds like Holy Spirit control to me. God has and does accept us as His own by grace through faith…..it is all about Jesus Christ, isn’t it? Yes, it is!