Acceptance Action

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. ~ Romans 15:7

Have you ever felt like an outsider? Has it been hard for you to accept others for who they are? One of my many weaknesses is that sometimes it's hard for me to accept how other people think, or how they view things; which let's face it, is a form of superiority on my part; SHAME ON ME! This is a characteristic of mine that I am learning to trust into God's hands and change because the truth of the matter is that I have felt VERY inferior when I hang out with certain people and I absolutely loathe that feeling...I don't want to make anyone else feel that way and it saddens me that I may. We are to accept each other, always. Is that a hard pill for you to swallow? The way you can gauge how you are with acceptance is to take evaluation of your friendships...have you had a few, a couple, or maybe even a handful go by the wayside? Even though I am tremendously blessed with many good friends, I can look back and see a few friendships that have slipped away that I thought would last forever? Why? If I'm honest, it wasn't all them, I probably was not as accepting as I could have been....whew, that was hard and sad to admit. Over the weekend we got to hang out with some dear friends of ours from Broomfield and over dinner on Saturday night we got into the conversation of relationships. My dear friend said, "We don't have the right to write people off. We just don't. That's not ours. We need to learn to get over our pettiness sometimes. Only God would have that right and he never has done that to any of us. Who do we think we are?" WOW! She's right. Only God would have that right and he never has. It struck a cord with me. Acceptance is dearly needed in our families, among siblings, among children, among parents, among friends, among coworkers, among spouses, in every relationship. Then I ran across this scripture this morning and I once again thought of my dear friends; she has every right in my mind to write certain people off in her life and she never did either. Incredible. Let me just tell all my friends and family, I'm not perfect and never will be, and neither will you, but I will love you always and continue my quest of complete acceptance. Remind me if you need to! Nothing should separate good friends. Nothing....because here's the revelation I had, if we are unwilling to accept someone, or if we are willing to write someone off for their wrongs, then how good are we at forgiveness? In effect, you are unforgiving if you write someone off because the reason you most likely wrote them off was because they hurt you. Maybe they didn't think like you and you couldn't accept that. How petty! Not at all like the Jesus we supposedly than honor and follow and call our Lord. Oh! Ouch! That revelation hurts me. I am so sorry. I don't want to be that way. Let's start with acceptance and love each other the way Christ loves us. Christ could have written me off time and time again, but he never has....who am I to say that I can then? Acceptance! What a statement of faith we could be to this world with that one word and action. ~