You are accepted! It doesn’t matter who else accepts you because Jesus Himself accepts you. Romans 15:7 says, “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” Jesus accepts us with all our flaws and frailties. He actually gave us our weaknesses so that God’s power might be made manifest in us because–believe it or not–God’s power shows the most in our lives through our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:9).
This doesn’t mean that we should purposely sin and hurt Christ. Of course not! But if we sin, we can immediately go to God and ask for forgiveness, and it’s gone. Christ accepts you for who you are RIGHT NOW, not who you are going to be when you are dead, after you are glorified. Don’t you see? You are fully accepted and loved by God, and you can rest in that acceptance and stop striving to be good enough.
We as women tend to derive our worth from how other people view us. How people perceive us does not define who we are. God defines who we are, and if He says we are accepted, then we are accepted!
If other people have expectations of you that are impossible for you to meet, they will always be disappointed with you. But that is THEIR problem. Shake yourself free from their expectations and thrive under God’s acceptance.
We believe that maybe if we perform everything to perfection, we will be accepted by others.
But God does not expect from us more than we can do. He is fully aware that we are but dust.
You don’t have to be forced to change your personality just because someone wants you to be just like them. John the Baptist, for example, was not gracious, but God created him that way and fully accepted and was pleased with him. God created him for a specific purpose that required him to be more straightforward than most people.
Peter the disciple was brash. Just because he acted without thinking doesn’t make him evil. God purposely created Peter to be brash. Sure, he could learn to consult other people for wisdom, but being a man of action is who he was. He got things done because he could think quickly. He didn’t have to sit down and beat himself up because of who God created him to be. And yet we as women do this all the time.
In the same way, you do not need to change everything about yourself to meet with the acceptance of the people around you. Yes, you can ask God to remove sin, but if it’s just a personality difference, God loves who you are because He purposely made you that way. How sad that we never accept ourselves for who we are so that we can become fully all that God has called us to be!
I spontaneously wrote a poem one day to encapsulate the experience I had with God when I felt accepted for the first time. After striving for years to please God, and hearing so many times that I was never good enough, my sister finally prayed with me over the phone, that God would remove whatever was standing in the way to experience God’s love and acceptance:
I am Accepted
I am accepted
God is pleased with me
No more striving
I am complete
God delights in me
I am beautiful
LovedWaves of love
Wash over me
Every cell of my being
Is accepted
I am at rest
I am complete
Loved
You can experience God’s acceptance, too. Take God at His Word, and believe the Scriptures that never lie, and don’t feel like you have to measure up to anyone else’s expectations of who they think you need to be. If you have over-performed for years, and people nit-pick and criticize everything you do, let their words slide right off. Don’t be hurt. The only person you need to be accepted by is Christ! You are accepted!
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My daughter and I created the artwork for this series from the course {aff} “You are a Masterpiece” by Alicia Gratehouse. If you love to do art and are discovering who you are in Christ, this is a great art course for you!
