One of the most positive steps that you can take to advance into the Kingdom of God is accepting yourself in your relationship to God. If you do not do this, you are vulnerable for the enemy to minister self-condemnation and guilt to you, when the blood of Christ has actually taken care of your need.
To be able to accept yourself in Christ, and acknowledge what He has done in your life, is sometimes difficult. All of us tend to lapse back into the responses established by past experiences. Let me illustrate this. If a mother often hits her child on the head and calls him a dummy, that child could be conditioned on an unconscious level to believe that he is stupid. Later in life when he takes a college examination on material that he knows thoroughly, he may have such an unconscious block that he fail the exam. He has a compulsion to fail. He has been convinced on an unconscious level that he is stupid. He appears to be stupid because he believes that he is stupid.
No doubt you would be surprised if you knew how many conditionings you have in your own life that hold you back from the appropriation of great faith. Something is doing it. In your heart you believe the Word of God and the promises of God. You know that God is not at fault, when you are praying in His will. Something must be crossing out your prayers, creating an impasse and blocking the flow of faith. Even while you are praying for something, you are unconsciously rejecting your own prayers. You are wiping them out before they ever leave your mouth.
When you receive a Word from the Lord, you rejoice in it and say, “I accept it.” Then for the next few days it may seem as though you are passing through the suburbs of hell. You wonder what is happening to you. Do you not know? You heard the Word and it went down to the subconscious level. Then all the unbelief and rejection came to the surface and threw you into a conflict and a turmoil. Remember—the battle is over the Word. You will have to believe the Word, and everything within you will have to believe it. You must believe that you are accepted by the Lord, that the Lord has taken over your life because you have given it to Him, that He is the one who has made you acceptable by the precious blood of Jesus Christ (I Peter 1:19; 2:5). The Scripture says that we are “accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). What a wonderful phrase that is!
You are accepted. Being accepted, however, does not mean that you have to “join” something. There is nothing to join in this walk in the Spirit. You open your heart to God and to what He is doing today in the earth. It is a revelation to you. No one is coercing you to join anything. You are a free person.
The traditional system, whether cult or orthodox sectarian denomination, likes to put a hold on people. They threaten, “If you do not submit or conform, we will excommunicate you.” We know that God has a better way of bringing order and discipline to a church. If you have some reason for wanting to quit and leave your local church, let me remind you that you never joined it. You were born into the Body of Christ. It is not an organization; the Body of Christ is an organism. It is a living Body. You are a member of it. If you did not join, does this mean that you are not part of it? You are as much a part of the Body of Christ as your arm is a part of your physical body.
Peter tells us what happens when we come to Christ. And coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. I Peter 2:4–5.
You are being built up into Him so that what you give to God can be acceptable. This was the first issue after Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden. Cain slew Abel because his own sacrifices were not acceptable. Abel’s sacrifice was accepted by God (Genesis 4:3–8). God says that this is what it is all about: You want your life and what you give to be acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
For this is contained in Scripture: “Behold I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious corner stone, and he who believes in Him shall not be disappointed.” This precious value, then, is for you who believe, but for those who disbelieve, “The stone which the builders rejected, this became the very corner stone,” and, “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense”; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed. Verses 6–8. Note the underlying thread through these verses: Christ was rejected so that we could be accepted. Isaiah prophesied about Him: He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Isaiah 53:3a. When the shepherd was smitten, everyone fled (Zechariah 13:7). They all forsook Him in that moment (Matthew 26:31). The cry from the cross was, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Matthew 27:46b. Why did Christ have to experience that total rejection in addition to bearing all of our sins? Why could not the Father at least have smiled upon Him? Because Christ had to go through total and complete rejection on our behalf. Not only did He bear our iniquities and provide healing through His stripes (I Peter 2:24); He was also totally rejected so that we can stand before God and know that it is not our righteousness, but it is what He did for us, that lets us be accepted in God (Titus 3:5; Philippians 3:9).
When you know that you are accepted by God, you do not have a struggle in believing that you are accepted by your brothers. The basic evidence that you have not appropriated this acceptance is that you feel unattached or out of place. Do you have difficulty relating to your brothers? Do you feel as if they are rejecting you and do not want you around? That may be your fault. When you sense that you are accepted in God, you need not be sensitive as to whether or not the people in this great Body of Christ accept you. God has planted you where you are (I Corinthians 12:18). You are a living being within His great Kingdom. You are born and accepted by God through the blood of Jesus Christ. How tremendous this is!
Have you ever struggled with this, wondering if you are accepted? There is a difference between being accepted and one with a person, and having accessibility to him. There are people all over the country who accept me, although they do not know me personally, and they may not have had any access to me. They have not seen me. They do not know anything about me, though they may have heard rumors about me. All I am to many of them is a voice coming out of a little box, a tape recorder. They accept me because they hear His Word. They say, “This man knows God. He is one with Him and he speaks a Word from God.” They have no struggle accepting me, because in their own mind and heart, they feel accepted by God. They listen to His Word and believe what Christ has done. This is the way churches come up.
Peter tells how precious the rejected stone is in the sight of God. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. (Not only are you accepted, but these verses identify what else you are.) For you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. I Peter 2:9–10. You must open your heart to this. You are accepted! True, once you were no one, no people, nothing; but now you are God’s people. You are a chosen people. He loves you very much.
Peter continues, verse 11: Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul. If you review this with faith in your heart, you see that there is a relationship which you must face. The greatest evidence that you have accepted what God has done for you is your ability to reject what Satan brings against you. If you know that you are one of God’s people, His own possession, and that you are set to proclaim His excellencies in the earth, then you can reject the enemy when he lies to you and tells you that you cannot do a certain thing. He is the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10), and he comes against all of us in that way. Because you accept what God says, you must totally reject what the enemy brings against you. Your capacity to reject is one of the greatest prerogatives you have. You can reject everything the enemy brings against you. Isn’t that fantastic?
When you have submitted yourself to the Lord and humbled yourself before Him, knowing that you are one of His humble little children, then you can “resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). James included both of those actions in the same verse. When you come before God, having totally rejected your own independent way to become His handiwork and His creation in the earth, then you are in a position where you can totally resist the enemy, and he has to flee. Because you have accepted your place in God, the authority of Jesus Christ rests upon you. When you accept yourself as one of His people, a people for His own possession (I Peter 2:9), then you can resist everything the enemy brings against you. We need that assurance.
There are thousands of people out in the world whom we have never seen, but they will hear this Word. They will say, “This is what it is all about. I must get rid of these deep, hidden responses that carry guilt with them.” But what should you do if you know that you are presently failing God and doing the wrong thing in certain areas of your life? Then you must deal with that situation and find the Scriptures to help you. John wrote, If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. I John 1:6–7.
When you take Communion, do you believe in what you are doing? You are partaking of the Lord’s body and blood. You are accepting His righteousness in place of your own. Then what scriptural right do you have to bring up anything that has happened in the past? When you partake of the blood of Jesus Christ, you bring up to that very moment the reality of what He did for you. Do not walk in self-condemnation that is without basis. Do not carry on your back the load of sins that God has forgotten. Is it really that easy? It is, because while you are reaching for the state of perfection, God counts as perfect the spirit that is humble before Him.
Consider what ability God has. He knows everything that everyone has ever done. He knows what they are doing now. He also knows what they will do in the future. Does this sound like a contradiction? Here we have just been trying to convince you that God has forgiven everything up to the time that you take Communion, and now we are telling you that He knows all the wrong things you will be doing tomorrow. If you are disturbed by this, let me encourage you. “A righteous man may fall seven times, but the Lord upholds him with His hand” (Psalm 37:24; Proverbs 24:16). The Lord already knows what you are going to do, what He is going to do for you, how He will help you. It seems as if He makes available to you an instant repentance and deliverance when you fall into circumstances that you are not mature enough to handle. Isn’t that encouraging?
This is not the doctrine of predestination, or the teaching, “Once in grace, always in grace.” We are not arguing over whether or not a man could ever be lost. To try to evaluate a man’s life by little hair-splitting doctrines seems absurd. This Word is for you to assure yourself that you will always be walking with Him. You want the outcome to be right.
Is it true then that the Lord knows all about you, that He knows what you have done wrong, and what you are going to do wrong? No, He does not. It is true that this is His capacity and ability. God is omniscient; He knows everything (I John 3:20). He is also omnipotent; He can do anything (Revelation 19:6; Luke 1:37). But suppose He decides that He wants to forget something. If He is not able to forget, that means He is not omnipotent; He cannot do everything. If there is one thing that God wants to do and He cannot do it, then He is not omnipotent. No doubt you are thinking, “If He chooses to forget my sins, then He is not omniscient.” Yes, He is. If He blots them out, they no longer exist (Isaiah 43:25). He still remains omniscient and omnipotent. What a wonderful Lord we have!
Peter tells us that we are “aliens and strangers” (I Peter 2:11). What does that mean? We are aliens and strangers to the world system, because we have been brought into God’s Kingdom. We are His nation. We are a people for His own possession (I Peter 2:9). We do not even belong to this world system anymore. Peter also tells us to “abstain from fleshly lusts” (I Peter 2:11). Get rid of all of those negative things. In the meantime, he wants us to know that we were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. This is emphasized in I Peter 1:18–19: … you were not redeemed with perishable things … but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Jesus Christ.
You are redeemed. You are accepted by God. The Father can no more reject you than He can reject His own Son now. He rejected His Son so that He could accept you. He forsook His Son on the cross so that you never need to feel that He has rejected you.
Do you have a bad case of rejection of self? Have you lived with that rejection? Instead of appropriating the righteousness of the Lord, are you constantly searching your heart? That is a pseudo-repentance. You have to get rid of that quasi-religious state. It is the devil who throws those thoughts in your mind that make you feel as if you are rejected. I believe that rejection is a product of you and the devil working together.
What are you going to be? You are going to be sons of God. John wrote, Beloved, now we are children of God. You are probably thinking, “But I don’t feel like His child.” Notice that the Scripture continues, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is. I John 3:2. The next verse specifies also that every one who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. The process is going on. Because you have faith that you are accepted by God, that process holds you in a state no matter what level it is—of being accepted by God. He will not reject you as long as you are reaching into purification.
Let us make a practical application of this. Suppose that you are walking along with the Lord, and in the middle of all your problems you take a tumble and fall right on your face. Do not get discouraged, because the best view you can have of God is when you are on your face—not when you are looking up contemplating everything. It is when you fall on your face that you see His love. It is at this particular point that you are aware of how much He loves you. Then the process of repentance seems to spring up almost automatically within your heart.
How should we keep a record of our brother? With a pencil that has an eraser on both ends. We probably have the wrong idea about how God works. When you have a repentant heart, the recording angel’s pencil has an eraser on both ends. He is not trying to record something against you. He is busy rubbing out the problems. God loves you so much.
You are probably thinking, “I know that I have felt rejected and I have not accepted my place in God. I have not accepted my brothers and I often wonder if my brothers accept me. I know I must get over this feeling of rejection so that I can be one with the Body and walk in this level of spirit. I cannot stay down on that soulish, sensitive level, always feeling condemned and always wondering if everyone is mad at me.” You may even respond the way children often do when they feel that their friends are angry at them: “I guess I’ll go and eat worms.” That kind of self-abasement is really not true repentance.
What should you do? Get over that feeling of rejection. Face it as a lie of the devil and repent for ever having accepted it. It is a form of unbelief. Recognize that you are accepted by God. Then accept what God is doing in the earth today, and accept your part in it. Accept your place in the Body of Christ, wherever it is. You may be a skilled engineer who is told to do a lowly task, such as sweeping floors. Accept also that this work may be the best thing for you at this time. Repent of any feeling of rejection, which is a form of unbelief. Believe that you are what God says you are: “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.”
Our critics often ask, “What do you people think you are anyway?” We think we are what God says: … a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God. I Peter 2:9–10a. We are aliens and strangers to this world system. If we ever get that across to our critics, they will really persecute us. But first we must believe in our own hearts that God has accepted us.
Get rid of any subtle unbelief. Get rid of even the ability to reject yourself, when it is instigated by the lie of Satan. Unbelief is believing what the devil says. When I was young, someone told me that you should believe only half the lies that you hear; then you will get along fine in this world. On the other hand, if we could only believe just half the truth we hear, think what a fantastic life we would be living in God.
All change begins when you see that there is something to attain. The first step in attaining any goal is to repent of the place where you were locked in before you saw the truth. The more the Lord liberates us, the more aware we are that His demands upon us are greater, and the more we find that we must repent. No spiritual growth is attainable by human effort; it must be appropriated from God. We will never have that deep assurance until it is ministered to us by the Lord Jesus Christ. It is explicit in the Word. Then why is it sometimes difficult to get hold of it? Why are we always condemning ourselves? We must reach up to the Word of the Lord and find that deep witness of the Spirit. We cannot manufacture that faith, nor can we talk ourselves into it. If we are locked into unbelief because we are not accepting our place in God, we must repent of it. That chain of unbelief will have to be broken.
Unbelief is a sin. It is one of the most heinous crimes that can be committed in the Kingdom. You can sin against your own body by fornication (I Corinthians 6:18). You can sin against your brother by murder and hatred and various other things (I John 3:15). But when you have unbelief in your heart, you are sinning against the integrity of God. You are doing the one thing that opens the door to all sin. At the very beginning, the devil asked, “Hath God said?” (Genesis 3:1.) That was the serpent’s opening line. Satan is still saying, “Did God say it?” What he tries to do is to bring some distorted version of the truth. The devil does not care how religious you are, as long as that religion is wrapped up in self-condemnation.
There is a danger in becoming very religious and constantly searching your heart. Do you realize how many people in mental institutions are there because they went crazy over religion? They can often be seen sitting off by themselves, weeping and weeping. They do not even know why they are weeping. They went berserk in their mind, and they are still wallowing in self-condemnation. The scientists agree that being religious could lead to mental disorder. So they psychoanalyze a person until he accepts guilt as a natural way of life. That is not the approach God uses. He forgives you of your sin, but then He wants you to walk before Him, accepting what He has done for you. That eliminates any religious self-condemnation.
The more religious you become, the closer you could be to a mental unbalance. The more spiritual faith you exercise to accept the Word of God and fight unbelief and condemnation, the healthier you become. Anticipate growth. Foster change in your life. Believe in the great basic principle that you will be transformed into His image from glory to glory (II Corinthians 3:18), that you will be like Him.
Of course, it does not yet appear what you shall be (I John 3:2). You may not look like much and sometimes you may not feel as though you are much, but be assured that God is making you to be something special in His sight—one of the “people for His own possession.” When He makes up His treasures, He will find those who, with the fear of the Lord, spoke often of His name (Malachi 3:16–17).
Let us roll off that condemnation. Let it go. Let us repent of this self-condemnation. Do you feel in your heart that even among the most spiritual ones, there still remain roots of the insidious reminder of the accuser of the brethren, preying upon the fact that the work of God is not yet completed in us? We answer him this way, “He who has begun a good work in me is able to perform it unto the day of the Lord (Philippians 1:6). He is the author and the finisher of my faith (Hebrews 12:2). I began as a miracle of God, and that is the way I will be completed—as a miracle of God. I am not going back to the flesh, going through ritualism to be made perfect in the flesh (Galatians 3:3). I will believe God!” Repent of unbelief. Repent of self-condemnation. Repent of having had an open ear to Satan’s lies. Let him be cast down. Believe to be loosed into the flow of faith.
When the devil comes and accuses you, “Look what you are,” then answer him, “Look what He says I am going to be.” When Satan says, “Look what you were,” we answer, “I refuse to see it, because God does not see it. He buried it in the sea of forgetfulness forever, to be remembered against me no more” (Micah 7:19). Your sins are removed from you as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).
This is the way God deals with sin. Because He is omniscient, He has to blot it out of His own memory. If He blots it out of His own memory, this means that it cannot exist anymore. It does not exist! Does that take a load off of you? Does that make it a little easier to believe in sonship? No longer will we believe that we are immature, self-condemned children who can never attain sonship. Instead, we determine to believe that what He has begun, He is also able to perform (Philippians 1:6).
If we accept that, then we can believe that there will be no circumstance, now or in the future, which will ever separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38–39). Revelation 12:10–11 says of the overcomers, “They overcame the accuser of the brethren by the Word of their testimony and the blood of the Lamb.” This does not mean that they were adequate; they just accepted Christ’s provision. They proclaimed who they were, and who God was.
Establish your position firmly and declare: “I will not accept, either now or in the future, any circumstance that will lock me in and prevent me from doing the will of God. Even though a host might rise against me (Psalm 27:3), yet I will trust the Lord to bring confusion to the enemy (Psalm 109:29). I will be an overcomer as I maintain this testimony in the Lord, and the blood of Jesus Christ will constantly present me.” Because God does not reject us, we cannot reject ourselves; nor can we reject the process and the development as a son is coming forth. If we accept that, then we can totally reject anything coming against us. Nothing that rises against us will prosper; every tongue that is lifted up against us we will condemn (Isaiah 54:17). That is the way we overcome.
Besides self-condemnation, have you also had an anticipation of failure? That is unbelief projected into the future. Instead of unbelief, let us have a faith that is projected into the future. Stop doubting and fearing. You know that everything will come out right in Him (Romans 8:28). You will overcome. Not only is the past buried, but the future is unveiled. Your future is victory. John said, For whatsoever is born of God ouercometh the world: and this is the victory that ouercometh the world, even (our anticipation of failure? No—) our faith. I John 5:4. Anticipate the future with joy and with faith to be an overcomer. It will come out right, because God said it would come out right.
Just as it was impossible for death to hold Christ (I Corinthians 15:54), so it will be impossible for the enemy to hang onto us. Christ’s victory meant our liberation. He overcame for us. The Scripture says that it is impossible for God to lie (Hebrews 6:18). He gives us an immutable hope which we have as a sure and steadfast anchor in the heavens (Hebrews 6:18–19). But haven’t we established that God is omnipotent, that He can do anything? Doesn’t that also mean that He can lie? Remember—if God can do anything, then He also has the ability to limit Himself. And, of course, that limits Him. Every promise which God makes limits Him, but He is able to make those promises. He gives us the assurance, “Listen, when I give you a Word, I have limited Myself to that Word that it will surely come to pass. Never will that Word be a lie. Forever it is settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89).
When you believe God, when you believe His promises and the prophecies that have come over you, you will be heading right into the appropriation of God’s unlimited grace on your behalf. The Word is true. God cannot lie. No matter how you have failed, He cannot lie. It is impossible for God to set His promises before you, and then back away from them. When He says He has accepted you, He has accepted you! The only thing that can limit you is yourself.