\u201cWhat if they don\u2019t accept me\u201d the student asked. He had been invited to interview for a position and his anxious condition caused him to seek my advice. His concern was a universal one. Everyone seeks acceptance of some kind, even those who boast they don\u2019t care what anyone else thinks about them. Counselors tell us that acceptance is a necessary element in the development of our personality. People look to various sources to find this acceptance. Some seek it from other people. Some seek it from God. The apostle Paul tells us how to gain acceptance from God. It comes through Jesus Christ, \u201cthe Beloved.\u201d \u201c. . . He (God) has made us accepted in the Beloved\u201d (Eph. 1:6). Once we feel accepted by God, it is easier to feel good about who we are. \u201cSo,\u201d I said to the student, \u201cif you are accepted by God and you accept yourself as God made you, then leave the interview in God\u2019s hands.\u201d The real challenge is not acceptance. Jesus died to make that available for us. The real challenge is that acceptance is not equal to arrival. Through Jesus, God accepts us where we are, allows us to accept ourselves, and then walks with us along the way. Acceptance is the beginning of a wonderful journey; arrival is the end of the journey. The closer I get to the end, the more I appreciate the beginning. How about you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWhat if they don\u2019t accept me\u201d the student asked. He had been invited to interview for a position and his anxious condition caused him to seek my advice. His concern was a universal one. Everyone seeks acceptance of some kind, even those who boast they don\u2019t care what anyone else thinks about them. Counselors tell…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}