Accept That You Are Accepted

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
According as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love:
Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made us accepted in the beloved."
~ Ephesians 1:3-6

Have you ever struggled to get your mind around a concept or an idea? When I was in the ninth grade, for some reason they stuck me in an advanced Algebra class. The teacher was more like a college professor than a high school instructor. His name was Mr. Ferrelli. The kids in the class were considered to be the really smart kids. And there I was - I don't know why or how I ended up there. I think someone put me in that class as a joke. "Hey, let's put this dumb kid in Mr. Ferrelli's class and watch him squirm. That'll be good for some laughs, huh?"

I struggled that entire year. I just couldn't get the concepts. It was like Mr. Ferrelli was speaking another language. He would teach a basic Algebraic concept, and I'd be like, "Huh? What? I don't get it!"
I'd ask for extra help, go to after school tutoring and maybe, after a couple of weeks of looking and feeling completely lost, it would finally click. Then I'd think, "Oh, okay. That's not so hard. I got it now." Of course, by that time, the rest of the class was moved on to something else and I was lost again.

Some people spend their whole Christian lives just like I did that year in Mr. Ferrelli's Algebra class. They're always struggling to try to grasp the simple reality of terms like mercy, and grace, and unconditional love. Those are words we use a lot when we talk about our faith. But some never really come to understand what those terms mean in our lives.
And if there is one single truth in the Christian faith that is more misunderstood, and misrepresented than any other - and one I believe people struggle with more than any other - it's this: Jesus Christ has made us "accepted in the beloved."

We tend to caught caught up in mind-numbing terms like 'predestinated', and concepts like 'before the foundation of the world'. That's a lot to try to get your mind around. We can't even imagine God thinking about us 'before the foundation of the world', can we?
Yet for all of this that seems so impossible to grasp, I believe there is a simplicity to it that many miss. God has made it simple for us; so simple that someone with child-like faith can get it.

The simple truth is: God accepts you! Jesus Christ has made you (and me) acceptable to God. You might wonder about a lot of things and struggle to get your mind around a lot of deep theological concepts, but you can be sure of this one truth: Because of Jesus Christ you are acceptable to God. He's done all that has to be done to make us 'acceptable in the beloved'.

Some Christians never get their minds around that. They're still trying to find a way to make themselves more acceptable. They spend their lives trying to earn God's acceptance. They think that if they could just do something - if they could just pray more, or study the Bible more, or start doing this and stop doing that, if they could just be more consistent - then somehow, at that point God might say, "Oh yeah! Now you've got it. Now you can belong to Me."

The gospel message is simply this: Because of Jesus Christ you are accepted. He has made us accepted in the beloved. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you're in the family!
But here's the hard part for most: You've got to accept the fact that you are accepted. Just like all those Algebraic concepts that were so foreign to me in the ninth grade, it 's a fact that will not change. We've just got to get our minds around it.

Just go ahead and accept that you are accepted.