FMF {Accept}

I’m not sure this post qualifies as a Five Minute Friday because it is now Monday.  In fact, I saw the word on Thursday evening and made choice to abstain from writing a five-minute post this week.

I had fully accepted my decision until I realized my Scripture reading plan selections for the last two days {Romans 14 & 15} have been full of the word {accept} and the word’s meaning as relates to followers of Christ.

So, whether this is for anyone else or just for my own pondering, here I am setting my timer for 5 and writing…

Therefore, accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory.  Romans 15:7

Now here’s a challenge for our modern day.  Apparently as much a challenge then as it is now.  Simply this… accept each other.  Christ accepted me and because He accepted me even while I was still a rebel and lacking wisdom and knowledge of Scripture, I too am to accept other believers who have also been accepted by Christ.

If I understand this directive correctly.  If a Christ follower is acceptable to Christ then they should also be acceptable to me.  If I am acceptable to Christ then other Christ followers should equally find me acceptable.

That sounds so simple.  And yet… the struggle is real.

So why do you condemn another believer?

Why do you look down on another believer?

Remember, we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

Romans 14:10 nlt

In Romans 14 Paul preached an acceptance of other believers whether they agree with you about particular dietary restrictions or not.  Some believe it is right to eat only vegetables and some believe they have no dietary restrictions.  Reading through this chapter of Scripture I realize as Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, “There’s nothing new under the sun”.

Again in Romans 15, Paul encourages believers to recognize what makes us different is not as important as what – rather WHO unites us.  We are followers of Christ.  If God is for us who can be against us?  And may it not be that we who are of one family under God our Father are against us.

Acceptance of fellow believers has been a topic in my particular church over the last several years.  We’ve sought the Lord’s face in prayer: confession, repentance, asking Him to teach us to love and to open our hearts to all the people of our community.

We’ve each needed to face our prejudices and the natural tendencies people have to congregate with people who look like them, talk like them, think along certain similar streams of thought and share the same traditions.

Yesterday as my husband and I drove home from church reflecting on the last month or so of teaching on spiritual gifts, we took note of the immensity of the breakthrough which had just taken place.  Surely there had been a shift in the heavenly realm.  Surely in the realm of God and His mighty angel armies, a victory had been won.

We are all followers of Christ, members of one body – all with different gifts so that we will be a fully equipped body to fulfill the good plans of our Lord.  Our diversity of gifts as believers (every gift as detailed in Scripture) is to be accepted and celebrated as one body for the encouragement of one another, for the building up of God’s family and for offering the Good News of the Gospel to our community for the Glory of God.

It is the acceptance of one another as followers of Christ, in all our variations, simply because Christ accepted each of us, we boldly rise up in our community an effective, loving and unified family ready to offer the Good News of salvation to all who will receive.

Unified, accepting one another in all our diversity, we are able to proclaim these words of the apostle Paul:

I bring you the Good News so that I might present you as an acceptable offering to God, made holy by the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:16 nlt