“God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen. ”
Accepting the Things We Cannot Change
Much like a birth mark on your face, we have myriad things to accept that we wish we didn’t have to.
Photo by Maksym Zakharyak on Unsplash
The secular world is stuck in an endless cycle of jealousy, envy, and competition because mankind is stuck in an endless cycle of trying to solve the insecurity and inferiority illusion. Many people strive and fight and manipulate just to try and get ahead of the next guy/gal. It’s the “Keeping up with the Joneses” mindset. And who said we need to keep up with the Joneses, or the Kardashians, anyway?
Society has people in charge of promoting ideologies (i.e. influencers) and products all while the direction of the United States is being hotly contested. It is a media-based, society-manifested, spiritual war: morality versus no morality. It’s a reversing of course for the United States from a place of Christ-centeredness to a place of self (read: Satan)-centeredness. The devil (Satan) would love nothing more than for the United States to become a place of death, destruction, murder, and poverty because that’s exactly what Hell is like. Rejecting God’s standards of morality is the way to become disqualified from His blessings — and promote Hell on Earth.
There are things we can influence in our lives — the things we can change — and we must influence them for the Kingdom of God. Jesus gave the Great Commission so Spirit-filled Christians would have a clear direction in life so people all over the world can also enter into the Blood Covenant with God in Jesus, too.
So, for the things we cannot change, we must accept them as they are until something changes and/or God grants us the opportunities to help change things. So keep praying and ask God to help you know the difference between what He deems acceptable and unacceptable and fight the good fight!
Accepting Yourself
One of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do was learn how to “accept hardship.” For a moment, let’s skip the “as a pathway to peace” part and get our hands dirty with “accepting hardship.” I have to tell you I did NOT want to accept anything that did not please me nor did I want to believe that the “pathway to peace” had to go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but here I am writing this having gone through my personal “Valley of the Shadow of Death.”
From my earliest memories until The Crash, I fought the very idea of accepting myself as I was. I simply refused to believe I was the person God made me to be. I was convinced that I was the distortion/caricature I imagined because my family structure, dynamics, and the pervasive negativity that surrounded me convinced me I was who I thought I was. I was experiencing hardship and was being conformed to it and I got to the point where I just wasn’t gonna’ take it anymore. Some things you must never accept — those are the things we are called to change by bringing them under the authority of Jesus.
“It’s important to do your best to not succumb to society’s negativity and nonsense. There are times when we must rise up and take on the forces of evil in the spirit realm. (Ephesians 6:12)”
There are some places you must depart, that you must not accept, because of various types of “unhealthiness.” We are all affected by our environment on some level, so we must shape it as much as possible into a greenhouse of positivity and possibility. Common sense tells us that if a seed is planted in the wrong environment, it will not grow.
Far too many people blame the person and not the environment. The debate can easily be settled if we can only agree that it’s a combination of the two parts, as discoverable in the nature vs. nurture debate. I see life as nature being nurtured — or polluted.
Your mind, and environment, might have been naturally and spiritually polluted, as well. Pray that God reveals where He wants you to be, but until you get that squared away, it’s important that you seek your “sweet spot” until then. We’ve all heard the saying,“Bloom where you’re planted.” This is a critical mindset for people dealing with depression. Find your place in the world.
Until you’re “strong in the Lord and in His mighty power,” you will have to accept that some things will not change like you might want. You will want to be filled with the Holy Spirit so you can have an effect on your environment instead of merely being subject to it. ALL Christians are called to have a divine impact on the world around us.
Many people go to the beach, ice cream shop, park, mall, gym, spa, or another “happy place” to get away from the stuff they don’t accept, so as to find some peace, have fun, be in nature, or the like. That’s usually where we feel we can best “accept” our surroundings. We have reasoned that we must find a place where things line up with our tastes best so we can decompress, feel safe, relax, and maybe even let down our guard.
Oftentimes, we have been guilty of not accepting things and others as they are simply because we have not accepted who we believe we are at the time. This is a difficult situation that leads many of us to shrink our circle of influence while taking fewer and fewer risks in order to try and protect our self-image and pride.
“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”
This is the opposite of the Great Commission: we cannot take the risks necessary to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’ if we’re staying within a fortress of selfishness, pain, bitterness, and rejection. The problem with this self-preservation mode mentality is that we have erected walls in order to keep us from getting hurt, but we soon discover that we have walled ourselves in and kept nothing from harming us.
God did not create us to be loners or hermits, but He created us for successful relationships and He wants us to be blessed with friendships. The challenges of social conflicts made right by our partnership with Him is the key to truly finding the place in our heart to accept the world as it is, yet seeking to change what we can. As Christians, we are to be the Difference-Makers God made us to be and that is only achieved by primarily enjoying an intimate relationship with Him!
The main reason you have not accepted yourself as you are is simply because you have not been taught/learned/accepted that you have been created by the King of Kings and He has made you in His image! He wants to partner with us individually and corporately to reveal His presence and love to a love-starved world struggling to satisfy themselves on substitutes and surrogates for God.
Accepting Others
It’s a toss up comparing which is more difficult: accepting your own shortcomings and faults or someone else’s. We have our standards and they need to be met, dagnabbit.
“Vanity: demanding people do what you want when you want it and if they don’t, you will punish them.”
We all have ways of getting our needs met. We also have ways of dealing with people who do not satisfy our needs. There are those who manipulate others to get their needs met while others are fine with plodding along, trusting that time spent sowing their seeds, so to speak, will bear out their needs as they do what is expected of them. Still others trust that God has their back and He will take care of their needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
The surest way of accepting others in their idiosyncrasies and foibles is to acknowledge our own. Understanding that, without Jesus, we are all sinners in need of a Savior is the key to accepting the world as it is. Arriving at the place of an intimate relationship with our Father God and allowing Him to love you will open your heart to others and empowers you to see them as people, just like you, but different. Never forget: we’re all the same — unique.
Photo by iRise Drink from Pexels
Here’s the other part of acceptance: Have you accepted your depression? Have you chosen to partner with it and agree that you should be afflicted and oppressed with it? Then you must cease and desist aligning your soul with it. It is your choice. Tell it to go in Jesus’ name and ask the Lord to show you what the stronghold is. Don’t accept depression in any way, shape, or form. Get it gone! Tell that Spirit of Heaviness to “Go on, now git! Git your fanny to the pit of Hell in Jesus’ name!” :)
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Closing
You will find that, with enough self-searching and prayer, you will discover that God will bless you with what you need to be in the right places at the right times and for the right reasons. He wants to place you where He wants you to be. God will take you places you’d never imagined and He will bless you with what you need for life and godliness and manifold opportunities to bless others to fulfill His promises to mankind. He wants all mankind to be blessed beyond the curse and we simply need to find it within our hearts to put Him and His plans first and seek the greater good and fly with Him in glory and surging Holy Spirit power and glory!
“Where I am is not who I am.”
Jesus was born in a place people asked, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?” Obviously, your environment is nowhere near as important as who you are.
Prayer
Lord God, I have had a lot of trouble accepting hardships and myself and others. I need Your help. I need Your peace. Please help me to understand why things and people are the way they are. Even if it seems everything and everyone is living in opposition to Your will and love, please keep me in perfect peace. I acknowledge that I have fallen short of loving my neighbor as myself and I ask that You would show me the way to fulfill Your commandment to do so. I’m not asking that You would make my life perfect, but I am asking that You would help me get to the place where I can have maximum freedom in my soul and maximum impact in the lives of others for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Free me from panic attacks, anxiety, and depression, my Lord! Show me my sweet spot, Lord, and help me to live from a position of victory. Please bless everyone on Earth with the awareness of Your love and presence. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Banner photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash