Month: September 2016

What’s Going on God? – pt 1

Many times I have wondered what God was doing (or where He was) during the difficult moments of my life.  And I have asked questions like

What’s Going on God?

Why is this happening to me?

What are you trying to teach me?

Why do I keep getting the short end of the stick?

I can’t take this anymore. What is going on?

Any of this sound familiar?  I have asked these questions and others like it on several occasions.  How about you. Have you asked these questions of God? Or ones like them?

Why did this have to happen to me?

What did I do to deserve this?

God is up to something in the difficult moments of our lives.  He hasn’t walked away from us or left us alone to wonder what is happening.  He is moving in us and preparing us so that He can release us in the future.

I’m sure Joseph had some of these same questions when his brothers threw him in a pit and sold him into slavery. And as he spent years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit I’m sure several times these questions played through his mind.  I don’t know about you but I could never seem to get an answer from God when I asked these questions. And this often added to my frustration.  I often felt like I had missed what God was trying to accomplish.  I discovered over the years that I haven’t missed God many times, and it brought peace to my heart because I realized I hadn’t missed out on God’s plan.  I had just misunderstood God’s methods for fulfilling His purpose in me. And I would like to share some of my journey with you.

God has given each of us a purpose to fulfill.  One poster my parents had when I was growing up said “I know I’m somebody, ’cause God don’t make no junk.”    God doesn’t make mistakes.  And God made you and I.  Jeremiah 1:5 states

“Before I shaped you in the womb,
I knew all about you.
Before you saw the light of day,
I had holy plans for you: “

God pre-planned and designed each us with a purpose to fulfill.  The question we most often have is how is my circumstance helping get me closer to what God has planned for me.  Our purpose is uniquely crafted specifically for each one of us, and God lays out a path for us so that we can choose to fulfill our purpose or to walk away from it.  God qualifies us all for the purpose He has designed us for.   What we do with what God reveals determines whether or not we disqualify ourselves.

There are 4 stages that God brings us through that enable us to live out His purpose for us. And they can be summed up in one statement by John Stott.

“Things happen TO me,

So that things can happen IN me

So that things can happen THROUGH me.”

Acceptance vs Approval

All of us have met people who rub us the wrong way.  And there are always things that people do that we disagree with, some of them very strongly.  Not everyone likes tattoos or piercings.  When I dyed my hair as a youth leader I got a great many negative comments from people who thought that it wasn’t the right behaviour.  Society has a great many different behaviours and attitudes that we disagree with.   As Christians this is more evident as we try to follow a standard for life that the world doesn’t believe in or in many cases agree with.

I have found that many people get rejected in life because we cannot agree with their choices.  We see the behaviour and stop and don’t go any further to the person underneath the behaviour.  Because we cannot approve of the decisions or behaviours we are critical of them and judge them harshly.  I have seen it so often and it is something I have wrestled with for many years.  I came to know the acceptance of Christ and found that it wasn’t conditional based on my behaviour.  And all through the gospels we see Jesus reaching into the lives of people who were in direct disobedience to what God wanted for them, and every person who met Jesus felt His acceptance of them.

If we see acceptance as approval we will never be able to build bridges to the people we come in contact with.  There will always be things we cannot approve of.  Approval means I am in agreement with.  So if you lifestyle is not something I can agree with then I must stand in disagreement and criticize and judge.  It seems to be the behaviour of many people in our world.

Acceptance however isn’t the same as approval.  People can be acceptable even when their choices go completely against what we hold as values and standards.  Acceptance looks at the person, not the behaviour.  Acceptance can be communicated even when approval cannot be given.  Acceptance says you are valuable and your value isn’t increased or decreased by your performance.   This is exactly what Jesus did.  Romans 5:8 “But think about this: while we were wasting our lives in sin, God revealed His powerful love to us in a tangible display—the Anointed One died for us.” (Voice)  Jesus didn’t wait for us to get everything right so He could die for us, He accepted us completely and paid our penalty, even though He couldn’t approve of our behavior. 

Acceptance seeks to listen, hear and understand a person simply because they are worth it.  Approval just looks for agreement with.  Our message can only properly go out as we work to separate these two.  Acceptance needs to be communicated and lived regardless of who people are and the choices they are making.  Acceptance is how love is communicated, and is one of the most vital needs in a persons life.  We don’t need to know people approve of us.  At times it is nice, but we can live without people’s agreement.  We cannot live without acceptance.  Something in our souls withers and dies when acceptance is withheld.

We need to receive and communicate acceptance in order for our lives to be healthy and whole.  It is up to us to decide whether we are going to learn to accept people for who they are and the intrinsic value they have, or if we will fight simply for approval and only spend time with people we can be in agreement with.