Fully Accepted

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Already Paid

I was in my college dorm doing some laundry, and I was so excited because doing laundry means that I get to see people and enjoy the process of getting clean clothes. I walked into the laundry room and began to switch over my load to the dryer when a young fella told me not to worry about paying. I told him thank you, but I did not fully understand what he meant.

You may know that once the load in the washer or dryer is paid for, all you need to do is press START. But because I did not understand that the kind fella had already paid for me, I spent I don’t even know how long trying to pay for my load to dry. Once I realized what he had done, I began to laugh at the amount of time I had spent trying to find and do something that had already been done for me.

Jesus has already paid the price for our approval—by dying on the cross and defeating death by rising again. Through Him we are sealed in acceptance (Ephesians 1:13), yet because so many of us do not understand what He has done, we are searching for approval for I don’t know how long, in places where we will never find it. In reality, our only job is to accept this gift of approval and simply START walking in the joy and freedom of it.

People Pleaser

We all love to be noticed. We love to be liked. We love to be accepted and to be approved. And this isn’t a bad thing, but it can quickly become dangerous when we seek to satisfy this longing with something other than God.

The decisions that we make will be based on what other people think if we are not walking in the truth that our approval is found in God alone. In Galatians 1:10, Paul says, “Am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” I cannot please Christ while trying to pay for something that He already paid for. I cannot please Christ while seeking the very approval that He has already given me from a world that offers it but can never come through. Seeking our approval from the world turns into us trying to please the world, and we simply cannot fear both God and people (Proverbs 29:25).

He is worthy of all of our praise and attention (Psalm 145:3). We were made to rely on His faithfulness, and that is why it is so exhausting trying to figure out how to get approval from the world—we were not made to get our approval there. “Where [our] treasure is, there [our hearts] will be also” (Matthew 6:21). When we come to the realization that our approval isn’t found in others, hope is not lost but found, and we can START walking in this hope and laughing in joy.

An Everlasting Love

You are already fully accepted through Christ. God calls you by name and sees you for who He made you to be (Isaiah 43:1; Psalm 139:13-16), not who the world has claimed you to be. God named you before the world ever had an opportunity to speak over you. God loves you. You are His treasure. Even when you fail Him, He responds with the love that dances from His heart and says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3), and nothing in all of creation can separate you from His love (Romans 8:39).

Just as I was trying to figure out how to pay for my laundry but couldn’t because it had already been done, so we will remain anxious and confused until we believe that Christ is the only One who can satisfy us. In Psalm 23:1, we see that the Lord is our Shepherd and that in Him we lack nothing. In Psalm 103:5, we see that it is the Lord who satisfies our desires with good things. The Lord intentionally made us with a longing to be wanted and to be approved, but because He made it, He is the only One who can meet this need.