And rest assured, Satan will pick at our scabs to reopen all of our old wounds. But we do not have to let him. We do not have to give in to the same old same old. We do not have to continue to live in the futility we lived in while we were in the world. We do not have to be stuck in a past that shackles us to futile thinking. When we grasp that God sent His only Son to die in our place - how can we not become changed by that reality?
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 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. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. - 2Corinthians 5: 17-21 (ESV)
We have surely heard these verses before but without faith to believe the promises of God they remain merely words. Nice phrases we can say hallelujah to on Sunday and then go home and cry ourselves to sleep. That is not a reconciled Christian! The dictionary defines reconciled as having settled a dispute. We were in a dispute with our Creator. Our sin, which we all know runs deep, is what causes this separation. Yet Christ took that sin upon Himself to reconcile us back to God - so we are once again accepted by God! Our acceptance in Christ is rock solid beloved. It does not change. It will not falter. Why? Because it is not based upon anything we can do! It is based upon what He did on the cross! Really meditate on that truth for a moment. We seek acceptance from people by trying to earn it. We think if we do something right or something they want then they must accept us. But God comes along and says no my child. I will accept you based upon what I will do. Therefore there is no more need to strive for acceptance within your own power. We need to accept the gift that has been freely given to us and find our acceptance in Christ Jesus.
Besides acceptance we also seek approval as part of the human condition. Realize even people who the world deems sociopathic or disturbed fall into the same paradigm, they just have abandoned hope that they ever will find acceptance, approval, or acknowledgment so they seek their justification based upon themselves. Approval also stems from childhood and wanting to know that we were doing good or right in the eyes of our parents or those in authority. It changes as we grow up and becomes integral in who we seek to be in relationship with. It becomes a huge reason why we end up in bad relationships. Either because we pick people we secretly would never approve of or we strive to undermine ourselves by picking people we know will disapprove of us on some level. This is the story of the girl who dates the bad boy when she is younger or the even the mature Christian who casually tosses Scripture aside to date someone who is unsaved proclaiming they will change them. It is all chasing approval but we need to embrace today that God has set us free from this as well. Through Christ - we are approved!
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, - Ephesians 1: 7 (ESV)
He redeemed us beloved! He purchased us back unto Himself. Through the blood of Christ, shed for us, He has approved us. Once again, not because of anything we have done but rather because of His great grace and what He has done. Once we accept this, we should strive to seek His ongoing approval in godly fashions:
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. - 2Timothy 2: 15 (ESV)
but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed--God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. - 1Thessalonians 2: 4-6 (ESV)
