Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God.… Romans 1:1.
But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen;… Galatians 1:15–16.
The Lord made very real to my heart recently that He has brought me to understand who I am. It’s humbling, but it is very important that you know who you are, know your relationship to God, know what He has said over you and that there be an acceptance in your heart of that.
Then the Lord gave me a promise and He said, “Now comes the time in which the fruitfulness that I have promised you shall be given to you,” and I am looking that the door will open that multitudes are going to experience and receive His blessing in this hour.
Where there have been small handfuls of people in this walk with God, God has thousands that are hungering after Him, and they will come and will be willing to follow in full self-denial of discipleship of this walk with Him. They will not be fair-weather Christians; those that are adhering to this way without any sense of the cross, but God will bring in those that will join their hands with yours to do the will of God in this hour.
Three things I would like to point out to you now: first of all, it’s important to have an acceptance of the Lord. I don’t mean accepting as in the sense of becoming a Christian: more than that, you have to really accept Him as the Lord over your life.
The second thing is that you have to accept yourself. Self-acceptance is not easy.
There is a third step; you also have to begin to accept others in the relationship that God has called them to fulfill, even if we still don’t see eye to eye, on different doctrines yet.
But it is going to be hard for me to accept a brother of sister as moving in God if I can’t accept myself as a servant of God moving in God. Weigh the wisdom in that.
It is disturbing that many people in this walk, a large percentage of those that have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord, and have accepted the truths of the restoration, are continually wiped out before God because they cannot accept themselves as being those chosen ones that God is going to use.
The question may come up about apostleship. People may be having difficulty with it. If anybody is going to accept this ministry, it has to be because God reveals to them to accept it.
We cannot accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and reject anything He says about us.
If prophecy or revelation comes over you and you don’t accept because of some stupid self-consciousness or pseudo humility, then you are not accepting the Lord, either.
You have to have respect for what God is doing and what He is saying in your brother or sister, but you can’t ignore what He is doing in you.
Can you downgrade the work of God in your own heart and still honor Jesus Christ as your Lord? You may be well aware of your problems and your unworthiness, your inadequacy. That has nothing to do with it.
If You can accept yourself for what God is doing in you. Then you have to accept others. I have one rule. Every person that I deal with, I very realistically accept them for what I see them to be. I don’t judge, I don’t reject them because they are not worthy. Whatever they are, I accept them as what they are, plus I also accept what God reveals to me about that individual, what they are going to be, what God is doing in their life. Then I have no problems, because if I did anything else, I would have to accept a person only because he measured up to certain standards.
I don’t have to do that. I can accept them for whatever they are if I also accept what God says about them in revelation, and what God is doing in their lives. That may be miles apart, but I still accept it. Acceptance is very important.
The opposite of acceptance is rejection or rebellion. If you don’t accept yourself for what God says you are or what He is going to make you, then you don’t accept yourself with your own limitations as being no handicap to God.
God can use you; He can change the things that are wrong. He can break down the limitations and make you adequate by His grace. Accept what God says about you. Accept who you are in the Kingdom of God, and when you accept that, you also accept Jesus Christ as Lord over you.
You can’t separate acceptance of the Lord from this self-acceptance that I am speaking about. Read the prophecies over you again and accept yourself as the servant that God has called you to be. Don’t draw back because you feel, “I see a lot of faults, I see a lot of problems. I have failed a lot.” God knew all of that was going to happen when He brought the first word over you, when He first laid His hand on you. He isn’t handicapped without foreknowledge. He knows. If God accepted you in your unworthiness and gives a word over you, you are moving in absolute rebellion and unbelief if you don’t accept what God says over you.
Then in turn you accept others. Suppose you say, “I can’t accept them, they don’t accept me.” That is not the issue. There is a story of the fellow who said that his enemies in the church drew a little circle that left him out. He said, “So I drew a big circle and put all of us back in.” It’s easy sometimes to say, “I am rejected, therefore I reject.” No, God has accepted a lot of people who are not in real submission to Him at all, but He is working in their lives to bring about that submission and so He accepts them as they are, and He also accepts them for what they are going to be by His grace. It is important that you understand that God raised you up to fill a certain ministry. It means a relationship to people, the people to whom you are to minister. Now if the Lord raised me up to minister to you, it’s true that there must be a certain acceptance in your heart to the ministry. You have to receive it if it is going to do you any good. But there are also cases where people have not accepted the ministry and you minister to them anyway. Strangers come in and there are no issues raised about anything that might be raised later, but I can bless them and minister to them. You see it is not so important whether you accept me—you will, to a degree—the real tough nut to crack is my accepting you. Now weigh that over. You may think that every congregation has only one problem: rebellion against the leadership or not. No, I have enough authority that when I see something out of line, I can bend rebellion right to its knees many times, by the weapons of our warfare that are not carnal but mighty through God of the pulling down of strongholds, to bring the very thoughts and imaginations of mens hearts to captivity and make them subject to Christ. (II Corinthians 10:4–5). That doesn’t mean that a person couldn’t rebel and draw away; he could, but the real issue is my acceptance. You say, “Brother Lee, I have to have faith. I thank God that I see you bless the people up there and the elders ministering to them, and I see the power of God surge through them and I believe. I believe it because I see that you are a man of God and these elders are men of God, I believe it because I see it, it witnesses to my heart.” And I look at some of you and see not one thing at all, but God says, “I am going to make her a prophetess, I am going to make him a prophet, I am going to make this or that out of that man.”
You see a little child with nothing worthy in it at all, like the one whom we hadn’t seen for several years until recently. His mother had a difficult time at birth, but God gave her a promise that he was going to be a man of God. He was nothing but a little weakling who cried a lot and he was crying at the time that we blessed him, but the anointing of the Lord still came upon him when he was dedicated, and the Lord said he was going to use him, He was going to bring him back. The Lord revealed that, and brought him back a full grown young man a little while ago, and confirmed it. You see, we accept even a little child that has done nothing one way or the other. We accept him and start ministering to him, and all along the way we see the child that’s grown up. We will see them in the light of their growth, and sometimes it will look like they are going the other way. We still accept them for whatever they are now, and we accept what God says about them and what they are going to be.
That’s a big test, and that’s the way you must accept each other. But you can never do that unless you accept yourself first. If you doubt yourself and your place in the body of Christ, and you doubt the ministry and relationship that God has given to you to the Lord and to others, that doubt will also be reflected in your attitude toward other people. You will find it easy, because you have rejected yourself, to reject others. You are not going to believe God is going to bless everybody else, if you say, “Well, I am not going to make it, but I don’t think they are going to make it either.” That unbelief will be total and devastating.
You can also apply this to the family; the families that are in this walk. When the husband can accept the wife just as she is, and can also accept what God is saying about her, what place God has for her to fill; when the wife also can accept the husband just as he is, but also accept what God says about him in the place that he is to fill; when they can accept themselves, the wife can accept herself as the instrument that God has chosen and will use to bless the family, the husband accepting himself as the ministry that God is going to use to bless his family, you have the key of a pretty good family moving on in God. It boils down to the very basis of this whole walk, that you believe what God has said in every respect.
Lord, let me accept you as my Lord. Let me accept the words that You give. Let me accept myself in the light of your revelation. Let me accept others in the light of your grace on them, too.