Finding and Embracing Acceptance That Never Fails - Denise Pass
Hope Discovery of the Day:
We will never be more accepted in God’s sight than we are right now.
Scripture of the Day:
Genesis 4:7
“If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
Acceptance. We strive for it most of our days and even place our hope in it, but we already have it. We will never be more accepted in God’s sight than we are right now.
Still, fickle man has hoops for acceptance wanna be’s to jump through. The right clothing, the right comebacks. An elevated position. The only problem is, the world’s standards just keep on shifting.
Finding acceptance is elusive when we try to find it in temporary things. Embracing the acceptance we have with God can also be elusive when we try to obtain God’s acceptance man’s way.
Trying to serve a religion will not get us the acceptance we long for from our Creator. Trying to do good deeds won’t either. We could never be good enough to earn acceptance from the Holy One. But our hope is not in our ability – it is in God’s compassion and mercy.
So, what must we do to get acceptance and to have it be enough in a world that may never accept us?
Believe.
Romans 10:10
“For with the heart one believes and thus has righteousness and with the mouth, one confesses and thus has salvation.”
The work we are called to do for acceptance by God is simply to believe in God and His atonement on our behalf and to profess that belief. God paid our sin debt so we did not have to. He has accepted us because He chose to see His Son’s perfect life and cover us with His Holiness. When He sees us, he sees His Son.
Stop sinning.
Romans 3:23
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Now this one is tough because there is no human who has never sinned. But Paul discusses in Romans 6 that we who are in Christ should not continue to sin; in other words, having a pattern of sin that we continue in despite knowing it is against God’s word.
Do What is Right
We cannot earn our salvation. But we can do what is right by the grace of God. Our good works are filthy rags before a Holy God. It is not just the abstaining from sin that is what God seeks after. We need to seek to do what honors Him. When we believe in God, that belief becomes action. God is willing to help us do what pleases Him.
Chasing for acceptance from man could never really satisfy us. The opinion of man is not what will matter for all of eternity. Being accepted by man suddenly does not mean as much in light of the acceptance we have by One Who is greater.
