Accept yourself as you are

Sunday 25 April 2021

But you have been declared saints, you have been declared righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:11

Accept yourself as you are

The apostle Paul remembered that he had persecuted Christians, which the other apostles had not done. God had not disqualified him for all that, on the contrary, since by grace, after his conversion, he had made him his spokesperson among non-Jews. Paul looked reality in the face. He knew he couldn't erase his past as a persecutor, but he fully accepted what God was doing with him. What he was now was the result of God's grace : “I am the least of the apostles and I do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I have persecuted the Church of God. grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me was not without result. On the contrary, I worked more than all of them, not me however, but the grace of God which is with me" (1 Corinthians 15. 9, 10).

It is important for a Christian to accept himself as he is, as God has made him in his grace. To accept his physique, the parents he had, his family, that of his spouse, the education he received. To come to terms with his entire past, including the unfortunate experiences he is still ashamed of.

Only the remembrance of God's grace can keep us in our rightful place before him, preventing us :

- or to devalue us in our own eyes. Am I not a child of God, loved such by him as he made me and as he shapes me every day as I need to be ?

- or to be proud of what we have. I don't deserve anything, and what I have I get from the goodness of God who owes me nothing, but gives me the grace to be what I am, and to be able to do something for him.

Source (The Good Seed)