Finding Approval: Like a Mother with a Son in Prison

Coming to a place of actually believing that God loves us is difficult. Many will say they believe it, but their conversation will betray what they claim to believe if you listen closely for a matter of minutes. There is always a catch, a stammering, a "but" or "however" injected somewhere, which promotes the notion that there is always a need for change or improvement before we can seriously find a resting place in the concept of God's love toward us. It essentially causes us to believe that "God loves us, but doesn't approve of us." This has been a problem all of my life. Most of us live with this attitude and are willing to allow that mindset to be the guiding force of our relationship with him. Kind of like the notion that a mother will always grievingly love her misguided son who is serving a life sentence in prison. God is the mother and we are the kid in the big house. He loves us, but we have to become something different and pay our dues before he will bestow approval. It just seems like common sense in most religious perceptions.

Arriving at the TRUTH that he APPROVES of us is altogether different than coming to the realization about his love, and where most have the greater difficulty, causing us to jump through never-ending hoops of religious self-denial, self-loathing and castigating behaviors. None of which promote the peace that simple faith in his unchanging love affords. So, when you go to bed, turn off the light, and lay in the darkness with nothing but your innermost thoughts, THAT is the person God knows perfectly. God is not in a different room or building curiously awaiting your return to see what you've been up to. God knows the person that you allow NO ONE ELSE to discover. You may even try to live in denial of who you really are because the truth doesn't fit the expectations and definitions of what meets your own standards for public display. That is why we have trouble with this notion of God's favor... his grace... his love... his approval. IF others knew what we know about our hidden selves, our darkest desires, our selfish ambitions and codependent needs, you know, the "real" us, they would unanimously agree on our unworthiness to meet the requirements of God's approval. Yet he gives it anyway.

He can do this because the covenant we possess is not based on sin and punishment as in the Mosaic covenant of the Law. The Law says, "If you will do THIS.. then I will do THAT..." For this reason, according to the the book of Hebrews, God found fault with this system, because people cannot keep their end of the bargain. Heb. 8:7 "For if that first covenant had been without defect, there would have been no room for another one or an atempt to institute another one." His love for us is so great that a new and better covenant was developed and ratified, setting aside the former one, so that God's love, favor and approval could be poured out richly upon us by faith in his promise, Heb. 8:12 "I will be merciful and gracious toward their sins and I will remember their deeds of unrighteousness no more." 

God has given his love, favor and approval. There is no need to fear. We are NOT likened to the son in prison who is somehow still loved by a poor grieving mother. This love and approval is real. It is eternal and unchanging. So much so that his own life within supplies us with the very things we need to make it in this world. He works within to will and do his own good pleasure. Take a breath, exhale and breathe again... This is not "to good to be true" as most religious traditions would have you believe. There are no catches, hitches, exceptions, "buts or howevers" attached. Can you allow yourself to embrace it? Can you let yourself be set free in the truth of this powerful reality? Can you live in the glorious lifestyle of acceptance that allows others to be released from religious bondage as well? It's time to see God in the light of his own definition of love. (1Cor. 13) And it's time to believe he gave himself that definition for our benefit. Believe it, trust it, depend upon it, fall upon it, and know there are no means of adding something by your own self-effort to make God's love more stable, secure, sufficient or trustworthy. It's a gift for the taking. So why not make it yours?

Drink deeply...

Pharisees Anonymous

     My name is Jerry Piper and I am a self-righteous Pharisee. I was taught from an early age to put on the robes of religious morality and proudly ride the high-horse of spiritual superiority. Therefore, my affiliated obsession has been to impress God and others with the glorious capacity to raise above the common everyday dilemmas that everyone faces in life and showcase that I have a better handle on living right than most. If I did stumble, I didn’t tell anyone, and pacified my guilty conscience with more Bible reading, church attendance, a larger financial gift, etc. until I felt worthy enough to get back in the saddle and once again ride with the belief that maybe it was my last time to be thrown. At least I had good intentions at riding on to becoming sinless.

     In recent years, I have discovered something called the Grace of God. I used the term frequently throughout my journey, yet never in the same context as I do now. Formerly, any reference to the grace of God merely allowed me to be forgiven just up to the point that I accepted Christ into my life. From there forward, everything was solely dependent upon the performance of my “living right” to determine whether or not I would go to heaven. Because I was so fully aware of my own frailty, how could I trust my own capacity to save myself? And what if I might do something sinful just before I die and not get to confess? I was in quite a dilemma. Even with such good intentions things just fell short of being stable. However, since I have found grace in a different dimension than the definition I understood in earlier years, like the Apostle Paul, I have been knocked off my spiritual high-horse by the blinding light of this glorious awareness. And, again like Paul, I have to answer for the fact that I have personally persecuted Christ and his church through my earlier insistence that we trust in something OTHER than the sufficiency this grace offers. I'm talking total sufficiency. Once and for all saved to the uttermost. All by Gods doing. That is NOT easy to accept if you were as steeped in religious tradition as I was.
     I still fall off the wagon now and then in fits of self-righteous dependence upon Mosaic Law, rules, regulations, and religious prescriptions for superstitious self-help and such, which makes me unloving, miserable, prideful, judgmental, aloof and holier-than-thou. Although I fall off the wagon a bit less than I used to, there still remains the fact that my mind is so filled up with all the religious trappings of gaining favor with God by "being good." I struggle with it constantly. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose. I still have a tendency that desires being perceived by others as upstanding, even when I have to admit the fact that I haven't been. Learning through years of experience that I can easily be rejected by those who call themselves my "brothers and sisters" for revealing my faults and failures, it has been easier to put on a mask and present a false identity that is far more acceptable to those who demand nothing short of "victory" (whatever that means) rather than “faith” as the acceptable standard of living. The fear and anxiety I have turned loose of since letting go of that need has been life-changing and enabled me to rest in a provision that comes simply from trusting God.

     Day by day I'm learning more how this thing called "Christianity" was never meant to be perceived as a self-help method of becoming a "better person" but an act of ongoing faith that God, who justifies the wicked, WILL do for me, through the frustration of failure, weakness, inability and brokenness, what I can never do for myself, by finishing the good work HE STARTED. Little by little, I'm LEARNING to trust that. So bear with me... the real me… the one that God loves… that Jesus died for… as I am learning to do with you. If there are no others who have something to say, todays “Pharisees Anonymous” meeting is now adjourned…

Drink Deeply...