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Please pray with me and for me: Father God, I pray that you will open our eyes, open my eyes, that we, that I, may know and personally receive Your unconditional love and acceptance. May we, May I, renounce the lies of Satin that question Your love and insist we, I, must earn Your love and approval. May we, May I, choose to believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. I ask for Your grace to sustain us so that as we face the rejection of mankind, may You enable me, enable us, to stand against the peer pressure that tempts us to compromise. In Jesus precious name I pray. Amen In our lives rejection is one of the most painful experiences in our lives. A dad asked his two children, a son and a daughter, recently, “What is rejection?” His daughter gave a nice description of what rejection is. Much to the dad’s surprise his son replied that rejection is when my buddy Joe won’t play with me and I have to play with my sister. Unconditional love and acceptance is one of the most basic needs of all humanity and I believe among animals, our pets. In life have you ever noticed the children who from earliest childhood strive for acceptance and approval of “significant others?” “Do you like my picture mommy?” “Did I play the game well like you like me to daddy?” “I’ll try harder next time and I’ll make you proud.” The social system many of us grew up in gave us the impression that if we appeared good performed well or had a certain amount of social status we would finally be somebody Life has taught many of us that try as we might to gain approval we always come up short. We learn that we cannot do anything to qualify for unconditional and voluntary love. We labor under the false assumption that if we live perfectly everyone will accept us, while there was One who lived His life perfectly and everybody rejected Him. She is not a member, or related to anyone in this congregation. Hear what she wrote that many may relate to: I came from a Christian family, and though there was a lot of bickering and hostility between my parents, I think I had an average childhood. Everyone always said I looked like my dad, but unfortunately, my mother was often angry at my dad and resented his family. Many times, when I displeased my mother, she would say I was just like my father’s sister, the one she often criticized. My parents provided for our needs well and intellectually I knew I was loved, but the feeling and assurance of being totally accepted and okay always seemed to escape me. Even after 35 years of marriage and several grandchildren of my own, I was still subconsciously trying to earn my mother’s approval and prove my love to her, resulting in many arguments between my husband and myself. She then goes on to say that she first realized unconditional love at the age of 14 when she understood Christ’s invitation in Revelation 3:20 and she began to walk with Jesus: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” She then writes, I was overwhelmed by His love, devoured Scripture and witnessed to all of my friends. I have never consciously chosen to leave that relationship but as I look back I see how Satan had attacked me in my most vulnerable area, the need to know total love and acceptance. Where are you at in your life at this moment? How has Satan attacked you so that you are not going to be attacked again? If you come to eat dinner with my wife and me you will find that I sit at the head of the table where to my right I can see our dining room window and the front door of our home. To my left I can see the entranceway to our kitchen, which leads to the backroom and the doors to our backyard and garage. When I am lying in bed I normally lie on my left side facing the door to our bedroom that leads out into our dining room. Why am I sharing this with you? I was ambushed some thirty-years ago while stationed in the U.S. Army and to this day I purposely sit and position myself where someone is not going to walk up on my back. Those who have been physically, sexually, mentally and or emotionally abused are similar for they tend to not want to be alone and make sure they do not set them self up to be a victim once again. So then how does one follow the direction of Paul in Romans 15:7? “Welcome one another, then, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” I believe the key word here is “welcome” for Paul states in the Book of Romans four major points: 1.) God makes no distinction between us as individuals -- we are all guilty and we are all offered God’s gift for salvation through His only Son Jesus Christ. 2.) We can all be freed from sin’s power through God’s grace and the Holy Spirit within us. 3.) We are all in “recovery” from something in our life and have no grounds for arrogance. 4.) Because of God’s mercy we must respect one another, despite our differences. It is in respect that we “welcome” another, not their title and or position but the human. It is in learning to respect our self where we are in our life, where we have been, that we learn to “welcome” our self just as we are. Here I am Lord, is it I Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go Lord, if you lead me, I will hold your people in my heart. God accepts us as we are; it is “I,” it may be society, who often does not accept me where I am at the moment. Did you hear what I just said? God accepts us as we are; it is “I,” it may be society who often does not accept me where I am at the moment. But the key to acceptance, the key to freedom, and the core issue of security can be found in the word “Relationship” as Paul tells us in Romans 8:35-39. For the core issue of security is relationship, acceptance of Who I Am: Who shall separate us from then love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to the slaughtered.” No, in all things we are more than conquers through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, not things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It was a busy morning, about 8:30, when an elderly gentleman arrived at the doctor’s office to have his stitches removed from his thumb. He was in a hurry as he had a 9:00 appointment. The nurse took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be an hour before someone would be able to see him. The nurse saw the elderly gentleman looking at his watch and decided they had time to evaluate his wound. On exam, the wound was well healed, so the nurse talked with the doctor and got the needed supplies to remove the sutures and redress the wound. \ While taking care of the wound, the nurse asked the elderly man if he had another appointment with another doctor that morning. The elderly man said, “No,” he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. The nurse asked how she was doing. The elderly man advised the nurse that his wife has been in the nursing home for a while with the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. As they talked, the nurse asked the elderly man if she would be upset if he was a bit late. He replied she no longer knew who he was; she had not recognized him in five years. The nurse was surprised and asked the elderly man, “And you still go every morning, even though she doesn’t know who you are?” The elderly man smiled as he patted the nurse’s hand and said, “She doesn’t know who I am, but I still know who she is.” The nurse had to hold back tears as the elderly man left the doctor’s office with goose bumps on her arms as she thought, My diary reads, “At times I want to scream; at times I want to shout. Sometimes I feel so lonely, I feel as though I could pout. But then I turn around, His hand is on my shoulder, His eyes look into mine. All of a sudden I feel so much better with God at my side.” For the “love of Christ” in Romans 8:35, does not mean our “love of Christ” but Christ's unconditional love for us. The Apostle Paul knew that experiences and persons cannot separate us from the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. When the Apostle Paul wrote, he wrote from one who had survived assaults and emerged triumphantly in Christ’s name. In other words, Jesus Christ was not just theory to Paul for in the eyes of Paul would God do less for His children then He did for His enemies? Here’s the problem for many who have been abused, many who have learned from life not to trust humans let alone God. As children, we learn which turns over into adults, which turns over into marriage, to our children and generations to come: If I do this then they won’t be mad and or scream at me. The problem for many to comprehend is that the love of God surpasses knowledge. Our relationship with God is not a question of our ability to hang onto God. The fact is this, God holds onto us, and God has the power to keep us securely and safely in His hands. It is how we make the choice to respond and who we want to have acceptance from that determines “Who I Am” in this world that we call home. In the words of Paul so eloquently stated, Ephesians 4:17-21. Now this I affirm and testify to the Lord, that you no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds; (the emptiness in their heads) they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance that is within them, due to their hardness of heart; they have become callous and have given themselves up to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of sin. You did not so learn Christ! - assuming that you have heard of Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus. In where you are at this moment in your life, are you struggling through some difficulties in your life? Are you having difficulty fully understanding the nature of God’s eternal relationship for you? Listen once again to the eloquent words that Paul tells us. Ephesians 4:22-24: Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature; created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. And along the way let us quit living in the past and live in the present looking forward not in who we were but in “Who I Am” as a child of God. Bring it on world; for I am armored in the body of Christ! Our closing prayer is the Apostle Paul’s prayer from Ephesians 3:14-21. Let us be in an attitude of prayer: For this reason I bow my knees before the Heavenly Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be fulfilled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen |
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