When you live in freedom, you know that seeking acceptance from others is a major obstacle to your freedom. So, where are you seeking acceptance and praise? Who do you hope will accept you? Who are you trying to please?
- If you seek your praise, acceptance, and pleasure from man, you will likely be controlled by and follow man.
- If you seek your praise, acceptance, and pleasure from God, you will likely be controlled by and follow God.
When you search for love and acceptance, you end up in strange places. And easily violate some of your great values.
Maybe you remember a phrase that we use, “Where you look, you tend to go.” That means where you look creates a path of least resistance to what you look at. So, be careful! What you look at easily becomes what you want, so make sure that what you want is good, not harmful.
When you seek acceptance from or try to please someone, that person now controls at least a part of your life. Often, they control you more than you realize. This becomes another way your ME flashes. You want their attention because you think it will somehow satisfy you.
It’s Totally Their Choice
When you want acceptance from others, you erroneously think you make it happen. Unfortunately, that is not true. It is totally their choice if they accept you or not. They accept you according to their standards, which often involve multiple criteria and are typically subjective.
Worse yet, even if they tell you the standards and you meet them, they still may not accept you. Ultimately, the standards don’t even matter because they either accept you or they don’t.
As long as you play the game, you are their puppet. You can’t make them accept you; it is not something you control!
Compromise Your Values and Beliefs
If you elevate your desire for acceptance, here is some bad news. You walk a slippery slope that leads to compromising or ignoring your values and beliefs! That is a clear sign that they control you and you have bad thinking. That’s one reason gangs work, and good people do bad things.
God is different. Meet His standard, and you become part of His family – totally accepted. The standard is the same for all – faith alone in Christ alone. Faith in Christ’s gift, His death, burial, and resurrection from the dead to pay for your sins makes you an adopted child in God’s family. That is the only criterion for acceptance, and it does not change!
Big Difference
The most amazing difference between seeking acceptance from God versus man lies in how freedom works. With man, acceptance continues to be conditional, subject to their whims and variable standards. You continue to be controlled and lose freedom.
With God, you become a member of God’s family by receiving Christ’s gift of His life to die for you. You might see that as a condition, but there are no conditions, just believe it to be true. For sure, once in God’s family, God accepts you; nothing will reverse the gift you received!
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable – Romans 11:29
It makes much more sense to seek God’s acceptance because He provides freedom. Seeking man’s acceptance is often a form of control or an obstacle to freedom.
When you understand that being part of God’s family is eternal acceptance, then you can start focusing your energy on obtaining the inheritance God has set aside for you because there IS a difference between the GIFT and the PRIZE!
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