At the church I pastor at, we finished a sermon series called “Faith Over With Feeling” (and if you’ve never heard about God’s design for our emotions, I’d encourage you to check out the series here).
A couple weeks ago, I preached a sermon entitled “Acceptance,” which was about accepting our emotions, and growing to accept others’ emotions as well. The reason we can do so is because God accepts us as we are, emotions and all.
If you’re uncomfortable at this point, I’m guessing it’s because of one word: acceptance. If you’re anything like I’ve been for most of my life, that word “acceptance” doesn’t sit well with you. Maybe you feel like “acceptance” is a synonym of relativism, a belief that truth isn’t absolute, but rather, truth depends on individual perspective, culture, or context. Maybe you feel like “acceptance” is the equivalent of waving a white flag over your life, saying “I accept that this is the best I’ll ever be in life” (this is what I viewed as acceptance for the longest time). Or maybe you feel like “acceptance” is the same thing as allowance, that acceptance gives you permission to keep doing the thing you’ve been doing without consequence.
But acceptance is none of those things. Instead, acceptance is just about being honest.
God calls us to a life of honesty. A life of honesty with Him. A life of honesty with others. And a life of honesty with ourselves. When we don’t accept parts of ourselves that are true about ourselves, we’re not being honest with God, others, or ourselves.
If God has called us to a life of honesty, then we need a life of acceptance—acceptance of our emotions, our limitations, our flaws, and our failings.
But why? Why do we need acceptance in our lives? Here are 3 reasons:
1. We Can’t Give God What We Can’t Accept
God calls us to a life of surrender. From the very beginning of creation, when Adam and Eve couldn’t surrender their wills so that they could take on God’s will, we’ve struggled with surrendering.
To surrender something, we have to give something over—our desires, our decisions, our way of life, etc. Surrendering to God requires that we give Him something. If you’re a follower of Jesus, you may remember the time that you said something like this to God: I can’t do this on my own. I can’t live the life You’ve called me to. I need You.
That sort of confession begins with acceptance: “I can’t do this on my own.”
Imagine what it would have been like to pray such a prayer without acceptance: God, I’ve got this. I’ve got a few issues, but they’re mostly because I’m surrounded by idiots. Save me so that I can go to Heaven. And help me have a life even better than the one I’m making for myself. But honestly, I’ve got this.
Sadly, I think that is the type of confession many of us make to God.
But if we’re truly going to surrender our lives to God (not just our life generically, but all the individual parts that make up the whole of our life), we’ve got to accept those parts of our life before we surrender them to God.
I had to learn this the hard way in high school.
In middle and high school, I started to develop an anger problem. And it started to get bad.
In middle school, while I was golfing with my friends, I’d curse if I hit a bad shot. As a freshman in high school, I almost got into a fist fight with a junior because I didn’t like the name he called me (and if you’re reading this, Mom and Dad, sorry that you’re learning about this in this way…). Several months later, I got so mad at someone that I started yelling at them and literally blacked out from anger because I was so mad at them.
And here’s the thing… I was aware of this problem, but I didn’t accept it as a problem. I would say things like, “Well, golf is just a frustrating game, so that’s why I curse” (and if you just muttered “Amen,” this article might be especially relevant to you). I blamed the junior for being a jerk. I blamed the guy I was yelling at for being annoying. I blamed everybody and everything… except myself.
Until finally, I said to God, “I have a problem.” I finally accepted the problem.
2. Acceptance is Necessary for Change
God changed my anger problem and is continuing to change my anger problem. But it didn’t begin until I admitted that I had an anger problem.
We can’t change problems we don’t accept we have. Don’t believe me? Let’s see about that.
When was the last time you had an oil change? Maybe 5,000 miles or 6 months after your last oil change? Maybe when you started hearing a strange noise in your car? Maybe when the “Maintenance Required” light came on? Whenever it was, at some point, you accepted the fact that you needed an oil change and got one.
The same is true for our lives. You see, God won’t change us until we admit we have a problem. He’s given us free will; He’s not going to force us into change that we haven’t asked for.
In 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Paul writes:
Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul goes from wanting his thorn to be taken away—even pleading with the Lord to take it away—to being told that God’s power is made perfect in weakness, before finally getting to a place where he not only accepts, but rejoices, in his weakness.
What would it look like for each of us to view our lives in the same way? That even if we don’t like parts of our life, even if they’re “weaknesses” in our lives, that we could see God’s power revealed in that perceived weakness?
3. God Accepts Us
David G. Benner, author of the incredible book, The Gift of Being Yourself (highly recommend if this article resonates with you), says this:
“The self that God persistently loves is not my prettied-up pretend self but my actual self—the real me.”
The self that God persistently loves is not your prettied-up pretend self… it’s not the version of yourself that you put on social media. It’s not the version of yourself that shows up at brunch or to a board meeting. It’s not the version of yourself that blames all of your flaws on someone or something else.
The version of yourself that God loves isn’t the version of yourself that you wish you were.
The self God loves is your actual self. The one who screws up. The one who keeps screwing up. The one who wonders if they’ll ever get to a point of not screwing up.
The Hunter that Jesus died for is not the Hunter I wish I was. The Hunter that Jesus died for is the real, true, messy Hunter, emotions and all.
Paul also writes (in Romans 5:8):
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
It’s at the place of acceptance that Paul hears from the Holy Spirit, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul begs for the thorn in his flesh—whatever that thorn was—to be taken from him. But it’s not until He realizes that God has accepted him just as he is, thorns and all, that Paul is able to know God’s power to the deepest degree.
God’s not going to leave you where you are. But God is going to love you where you are.
Earlier this year, my friend Allyce Fogle-Logue and I wrote an article published by Firebrand Magazine about this very concept of how we are both accepted and invited into transformation by God.
Once we recognize that God has accepted us and continues to accept us as we are, we can accept ourselves. And once we accept ourselves—flaws, weaknesses, emotions, and all—then we accept others.
But it begins with acceptance. Until we start there, we’ll be skirting around all the ways God wants to transform us. But He won’t start until we let Him.
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Hunter Bethea 
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