Every Friday a question is printed at the end of this column inviting a response. If you are a religious leader on Kaua’i, please send in your thoughts or suggestions for future topics. Due to the generous response to the
Every Friday a question is printed at the end of this column inviting a response. If you are a religious leader on Kaua’i, please send in your thoughts or suggestions for future topics. Due to the generous response to the subject of acceptance, answers on this topic continue this week. There is a new question at the bottom of the page.
Pastor Nathan Grosse
Lanakila Baptist Church
Today, I want to look at acceptance from a little different perspective than we are used to hearing. The question I have is, “Have you accepted God?” You might answer “I believe in God”, and 98 percent of Americans do believe in God, but belief is different than acceptance. To accept something means to take or receive it as it is. God has revealed Himself to mankind through His written word, the Bible. If we are going to accept God as He revealed Himself, we must make sure we read and study the Bible. Last week we talked about the attributes or characteristics of God. We learn the attributes of God from His word.
It is a common practice to believe in God, yet accept Him as we desire him to be. This is done so that we might have the perception that God accepts my way of living. The only way to know that God accepts my way of living is to accept God as He revealed Himself. This truth was vividly and tragically played out in the lives of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4:1-10. Cain rejected God’s requirements for an offering and brought what he felt was acceptable; unfortunately because of this, God did not accept Cain’s offering.
Truth by definition is exclusive. To have truth you must have non-truth. To have true acceptance you must have rejection. I’ll use the marriage relationship to illustrate. To have truly accepted your spouse you must reject all others. If a man claims to love all women, he has accepted none. The same principle is true of God. I want to challenge you to be sure to be accepted by God by means of accepting God as He is.
Rebecca DeRoos
Science of Mind practitioner
There’s a song I’ve learned in my spiritual training: “I love myself the way I am, there’s nothing to rearrange. I’m beautiful, I’m capable of being the best that I am.” When feeling low, I often find myself singing this song to remind myself of who I really am and to remind myself of all I am capable of.
We are all children of God, created by God “in His own image” with unique treasures that sometimes we haven’t even glimpsed. To give you an idea of our uniqueness, look around at every face you see. Not one looks exactly alike. What unique creations we are. I wonder if even an artist could create this many faces and bodies with such variety as God has. To spend this much time on such a grand selection of people, there has to be purpose for each one of us. God didn’t have this much fun creating without reason.
It takes a readiness and maybe many lifetimes to accept who we are — to love who we are. Self-acceptance is the key to happiness and seeing one’s own purpose, but it takes time and patience and trial and error. Our ads concerning beauty don’t prosper the idea of inner beauty. They can even encourage false hopes in youth and adults that acceptance depends on beauty.
Good practice for self-acceptance would be first to accept others the way they are no matter their color, race, job, opinions or attire. Their former “disfigurements” would actually become unique within our mind and eyes, causing us to want to learn more about their inner beauty. Love and acceptance begets love and acceptance. We couldn’t help but feel great after accepting another — thus, a residual gift of self-acceptance. To remember and accept who I am, I think of this verse: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” Gen. 1:27.
Next week’s question:
• Will you speak to us on gratitude?
• Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com.
• Deadline each week is Tuesday at 5 p.m.
