Romans 15:5-7 June 2009
ACCEPTANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS
Ill. When Myrtle met George there were many things about him she felt she would like to change, but she thought she would wait until they were married. On the wedding day she was standing nervously at the back of the church waiting for the signal to walk down the aisle. She was quite scared of doing the wrong thing, so she kept reminding herself that she had to walk down the aisle to altar when the hymn started to play. Aisle, altar, hymn. Those standing in the foyer heard her repeating over and over again, “I’ll alter him.”
So many people go into relationships with their own agenda and their own list of expectations and those expectations are often what they expect of the other person.
Sadly, one of the greatest causes of conflict and unhappiness in relationships is when one or both parties are trying to change the other. Trying to squeeze them into their mould. The one who is trying to change the other will often resort to control, manipulation, threats, even emotional blackmail in order to make the other person into what they want them to be. The person having the pressure put on them to change feels they are not acceptable as they are, there is something very wrong with them, rejected and discouraged and angry. The message they get is that I will not accept you unless you meet my specifications and expectations.
Ill. Reminds me of the farmer who was advertising for a wife in the personal column of a newspaper. “Farmer wanting lady to form relationship with a view to marriage. Must have own tractor. Please send photo of tractor.”
Paul begins chapter 14 by saying, “Accept believers who are weak in the faith and now again he says, in 15:7 “Accept each other just as Christ accepted you.”
If we are to accept one another:
We need to distinguish between people and their behaviour and attitudes.
Paul does not say that we should accept the wrong behaviour and beliefs of others, but he does say that we should accept the people.
A lot of people find it hard to understand that we can love and accept people without accepting their lifestyle or behaviour. I cannot accept homosexuality, but I can accept and love the people who practice homosexuality.
Ill. Years ago I remember a friend of mine sharing with me that she was involved in a lesbian relationship. And I said to her, “I don’t condone what you are doing but I will always love and accept you no matter what you do.” She said to me, “If you can’t accept my behaviour you can’t accept me, because that’s part of who I am.” I don’t agree, sin is not part of who we are, it’s what we do.
God loves and accepts us for who we are but He can never accept our bad attitudes and behaviour. He can never accept what is wrong and evil. And He doesn’t expect us to accept those things in others or in ourselves.
I have often said with regard to our children that when we are correcting them we need to be careful that we distinguish between their behaviour and them as people.
We need to point out that that attitude, those words or that action was wrong, mean, unloving, deceitful, horrible, offensive, irresponsible, but we must never tell them that they are horrible, clumsy, irresponsible, a liar, stupid, thoughtless, etc. because that confuses what they have done with who they are and children can’t make the distinction.
When we put these sinful label on them they assume that they are horrible people.
This just doesn’t apply to our children; I believe we
need to make this distinction in every relationship we
are involved in.
Ill. I was talking one day to a Christian man who had lost all his motivation for work and he told me that he was bored with life. And yet he had a lovely wife and children and he was very gifted. As we talked, he spoke about a very significant thing that happened to him when he was a young boy at school. He wrote a story that he thought was really good and handed to his teacher. The teacher read it and told him that it was no good and that he was useless. This teacher labelled him useless and because she was a very important person in his life at the time, he believed her and that label somehow stuck. That label [which we saw the other week was a lie] affected everything he did and in the end he gave up trying and discouraged and bored.
I can’t stress enough how important it is when we are correcting others to speak about the actions, the words and the attitudes that are offensive while letting the people know that we love and accept them for who they are.
Accepting, valuing, appreciating, affirming each other for who we are, the people God loves and created is so important in relationships.
But that doesn’t mean that we have to accept things that are wrong, harmful and offensive and so we need to be able in love to talk about the behaviour and attitudes without making the other person feel that we are rejecting them.
That is how God treats us. He loves, values, accepts us for who we are and nothing will ever change that, but He loves us too much to allow offensive attitudes and behaviour to remain, because He knows these things will destroy the relationship and ultimately destroy us.
Ill. If you had a life threatening disease and a friend of
yours knew how it could be cured, what kind of a friend
would they be if they said to themselves, “We’ll that disease is part of them and I have to accept them disease and all.”
God loves us as we are but He loves us too much to leave us as we are.
We need to distinguish between what are real sins and what are questionable matters.
In Romans 14:1 Paul “Accept those whose faith is weak without passing judgement on disputable, questionable matters.”
Many of the things we judge and criticise in others are not wrong. Sometimes they are idiosyncrasies, funny or unusual mannerisms, personality traits that we allow to bug us. And because they bug us we judge and reject the person because of those things. Or they are things that we hold strong opinions about but they are not spoken against in the Bible.
In fact many of the things we judge in others are simply our own prejudices and fixed opinions.
In the church at Rome some believers were criticising and rejecting others because of things like eating habits. One group was very finicky about what they ate; the other group ate whatever was put in front of them. One group was judging the other because they didn’t agree with what they were eating and other group were criticising the others because they were being too fussy.
Over the years we Xs have created rules and prohibitions about things that Bible says nothing about.
Ill. A pastor once asked me, “Would you allow someone who smokes to lead a small group?” “Yes. Because although smoking may be bad for your health, there is nothing in scripture that says it is morally wrong.” There are many Christians who abuse their bodies in other ways. There are many people who don’t smoke but they criticise and condone others, they are spiritually proud and self-seeking, they cheat and rip off people in business.
Now this is not as silly as it sounds, but I know of married couples who are constantly fighting over little things that bug them. These things are not moral issues. They are simply harmless character traits or mannerisms that get on each others nerves. Picking their nose, squeezing pimples, biting their nails, stuttering, muttering or spluttering.
I don’t believe my husband should be mowing the lawn on a Sunday. I get really annoyed with my wife spending so much time on the telephone. I can’t stand my husband wearing those funny old shorts around the house. It really bugs me when my wife leaves dishes in the sink. I get really resentful when my husband squeezes the toothpaste tube in the middle, or leaves the toilet set up.
So many churches and X relationships have split up because believers were unwilling to accept each other with their different opinions, ideas and ways of doing things.
Christians have rejected, criticised and walked out on one another over issues that are not even clearly pointed out in the New Testament. Versions of the Bible, music, worship, dress, length of sermons, content of services, etc, etc. One whole denomination split over whether Jesus was going to return before or after the tribulation.
If we are becoming resentful, angry, annoyed at someone else, we need to ask a very honest question. Is the thing I am annoyed at morally wrong and harmful to others, is it destructive to our relationship, is it clearly spoken against in the NT?
If it is not, then perhaps I need to make the adjustment, not the other person. I am the one with the problem, not them. My attitude needs to change. In this case it is not a matter of changing them, but changing me.
Remember the alcoholics anonymous prayer “God grant me the serenity to change the things I can change, to accept the things I can’t change and the wisdom to know the difference.”
We are all different, we all have our strange idiosyncrasies, we all have our opinions and ideas about how things should and shouldn’t be done, and in the grey areas, the areas that are not specifically addressed in the New Testament we need to accept one another with our differences and in spite of our differences.
In essentials unity, in non-essentials charity.
When you think about it, God hasn’t made any two people alike. We are all unique and yet He loves and accepts us as we are with all our funny little quirks and mannerisms.
Christian unity does not mean that every person has the same view on every issue, nor does it mean that every person does everything the same as the rest. X unity is based on the fact that we all worship, serve and follow the same Lord Jesus Christ, even if we express it in different ways and that we hold to the basic essential truths of the Christian faith as clearly presented in the NT.
We need to distinguish between what is truly offensive behaviour and what are our own critical reactions.
One of the reasons we won’t accept one another is because we have a critical spirit.
There are three basic causes of a critical spirit.
1. Unresolved hurt.
Sometimes we become deliberately critical, difficult and fault finding because we are hurting inside. We are angry because we feel we have been overlooked, offended, rejected, we couldn’t get our own way.
Ill. Years ago I had a friend who was on our church leadership team and we were very close friends and he was very supportive of me and then over a period of time I noticed that he became quite critical, negative and nit picking. In meetings he would be deliberately difficult and quibble over little things that were not really that important. It just seemed that whatever we did or suggested he would find fault with it. After a while I spoke to him about it and I said, “Have I offended you in any way?” At first he didn’t want to say anything but eventually it came out. He felt that I had neglected him as a friend and he was feeling quite angry, hurt and rejected.
He was angry at me and felt that by being deliberately difficult and critical he could get back at me.
If we find ourselves being critical a lot of the time, the problem may not be out there, it may be in here.
Ill. Limburger cheese has a putrid smell. When grandpa was taking a nap his grandchildren put some on his moustache as a joke. When he woke up he said, “Pooh! this room stinks.” So he went into the kitchen and it stank too. He went out side to get some fresh air and exclaimed, “The whole world stinks.” Until we change our stink attitude everything will stink.
Ask God if there is any unresolved hurt, anger, bitterness, unforgiveness in our heart. If there is, we need to ask God’s forgiveness for our attitude and forgive whoever we believe has hurt us and let it go. Forgiveness literally means ‘to let it go, to release.’
2. Perfectionism.
This is when we have unrealistic expectations of our selves and others. Somehow we have taken on this false belief that everything and everyone has to function perfectly and when they don’t we get angry and become critical. It often comes from being brought up in a very critical environment.
When we have this perfectionist attitude we can be very difficult to live with and we find it very difficult to live with ourselves because we have these unrealistic expectations that are never being met and we become angry and critical of every fault and failing we see in ourselves and in others.
As I shared two weeks ago we need to recognise this as a lie from Satan, confront it whenever that anger and critical attitude arises and hand the lie over to Jesus for destruction. Speak the truth to ourselves. “Things and people will never be perfect this side of heaven. Learn to live with mistakes, learn to make allowances for our imperfections and failures and those of others or we will go crazy.”
“Sometimes good enough is good enough.”
2. Low self Esteem.
If people are constantly critical of others it is often because they a low opinion on themselves.
There is a vast difference between humility and low self esteem. Humility is honestly admitting your weaknesses and failures and asking God for forgiveness and His grace to overcome them. Low self-esteem is when you dislike and cannot accept the person you are, the person God created and loves.
In most cases low self-esteem comes from the false messages we have picked up from the negative experiences and hurtful people in the past.
And as I said the other week when people and
circumstances treat us badly it’s so easy to believe that there is something wrong with us for that to happen and we grow to dislike ourselves.
And people with low self-esteem often become very critical of others because in making others look bad they think it will make them look better. It’s such a lie.
Ill. Years ago there was a young man in one of our churches and he was quite critical for his 21 years and seemed to be always finding fault with things in the church. His attitude was that we were doing it all wrong and he knew better. One day I spoke to him about this and I asked him if he had ever been deeply hurt by people in his past. He told me that when he was a child he used to spend a lot of time at a neighbours house. Each night after school he would go around to their home and play with the children. He really loved this family and treated it as a second home. One day he was there and overheard the mother speaking to his mother on the phone, “Would you please tell Frank he is not to come around here anymore. He is a jolly nuisance.” From that time on he stopped trusting people, he began to dislike himself and became very suspicious and critical of others.
Once again these are lies that Satan has fed us as a result of negative experiences and when we find ourselves being critical of others we need to ask ourselves, “Am I doing this to make myself look better.”
Then I need to hand those self-depreciating lies over to Jesus for destruction and begin to listen to what God says about us.
If you have trouble accepting yourself, God doesn’t. He knows you far better than you know yourself. He sees you at your best and at your worst, and he loves you and accepts you for who you are.
Romans 15:7 “Christ has accepted you.”
Jesus loves you, values you, treasures you just for who you are. Listen to some of things God says about you.
“You are precious to me, honoured and I love you.” Isaiah 43:4
I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. Isaiah 49:16
I have love you with an everlasting love and with cords of compassion I have bound you to myself. Jeremiah 31:3
I spared not my only Son, but gave Him up for you. Romans 8:32
I purchased you from the powers of evil not with silver or gold but with the precious blood of my Son Jesus. 1 Peter 1:18
I will never leave you or abandon you. Hebrews 13:5
God would say to you this morning, “If you want to know how much I value and treasure you, if you want to know how much you are worth to me, look at how much I gave and sacrificed in order to save you from the power of evil and bring you to myself. Look at the cross.”
Christ accepted you with all your idiosyncrasies, funny mannerisms, with all your flaws and failings, with all your hang-ups and hurts and then helped you work your way through them and over come them.
If He could accept you as you are, can you not accept each other?
Prayer – to know Gods love and acceptance of you