Perhaps you had to compete for attention among many siblings, or were from the wrong side of the tracks (like me), just to name a couple of scenarios. You may, unknowingly be seeking acceptance to know that you're okay. But what the study continued to explain is that when that acceptance is not given, the tendancy is to get angry or sad (hurt) that your "niceness", your giving, is rejected.
Thankfully the study moved toward God, and this is where combining my recent studies in the scriptures came full circle. When we believe on Jesus Christ, when we believe as Romans 10:9 & 10 exhorts (confess Jesus as Lord and believe God raised him from the dead), then we are saved and made whole. Romans speaks of the righteousness that comes of believing and not of works. It is part of the nature of the gift of holy spirit given at the time of the new birth. Righteousness is made unto us. We take on this characteristic spiritually in the new man. Of course, the real day-to-day living is when we put on mentally what is within us spiritually, when we really believe and act according to our new nature that is like Christ.
Well, to take this truth a bit further, I got to thinking about the righteousness we have, how God made us accepted in the Beloved. How He made us his handiwork (poema in the Greek, which means masterpiece). How He made it available to have access to His heart, to lay our hearts bare before Him without condemnation. How we can stand before Him with remission for sins, and receive forgiveness when we screw up. He truly wants us to be able to have confidence toward Him, to stand in His presence daily without sensing guilt, condemnation, fear, or shortcomings. He paid the ultimate price of His Son's life in order for us to have this new life. And yet...
So often, if we forget to look at ourselves through the kinder eyes of God, through His filter of mercy and His grace...if we do not remember that we are already approved before Him...we will seek to find approval from a baser source - mankind. How often we forget that we are accepted of God! That we are a sweet smelling savor unto Him! It is at times like these, in our forgetfullness (or perhaps ingorance if we have not yet been instructed) that we will seek glory of men. And sadly, it is at these very times that we will also discover our greatest rejections and disappointments. Mankind does not readily look within that they might behold the perfection of the "Christ in us" as our Heavenly Father does; mankind does not gaze upon our hearts that they might consider our motives.
We need to raise our vision to think of ourselves according to what He thinks. It is then that we will declare as Paul did in his epistle to the Romans (Romans 8:30 & 31):
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
And of course, if we are thinking rightly of ourselves according to what He has made us, our reply will be, "No one!" (Or at least, it won't really matter what others think of us, so long as we care most deeply about what He thinks of us!)
With this kind of freedom from seeking acceptance of others, imagine now the liberty with which you can now give if you so desire. Now the kind of giving that is for the sheer sake of giving, and not for approval of others, can begin. Such giving is full of agape love that seeketh not her own. Such giving is full of grace that expects nothing in return. Such giving is free; it needs no man's approval, for it has already found it with God!
