Receiving The Spirit of Full Acceptance

Receiving The Spirit of Full Acceptance

By Apostle Felix

15  And you did not receive the “spirit of religious duty,” leading you back into the fear of never being good enough. But you have received the “Spirit of full acceptance,” enfolding you into the family of God. And you will never feel orphaned, for as he rises up within us, our spirits join him in saying the words of tender affection, “Beloved Father!” 

Romans 8: 15

The temptation most believers face is an attempt to find acceptance with God by religious activities. Most churches are religious duty oriented. Every adherent in such churches is a religious performer. There pride is in how much performance one has out done the other. Works are more emphasized than the one work Jesus Christ accomplished for all men. This is when you hear from the pulpit that you have to do for God to bless you. Deuteronomy  28: 1, is the most quoted portion of scripture in such churches.

1  And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:

Deuteronomy 28: 1

God does not bless you because you did, but He blesses you because you believed. The Moses generation had to do something in order to receive from God. But in the Jesus generation, Jesus did it all and we believe in all He did. Therefore, our acceptance before the Lord is not in our doing something, but believing in the One who destroyed the inferiority complex that had kept man away from God. Sin made man to have inferiority complex. It brought about such a separation between man and God. God did not chase man away, but man all by himself ran away from God and hid. He saw Himself as one who could not be accepted by God because of sin. The moment man hid himself from God, he died. Death is a separation from God, and the absence of God’s presence is what is called a curse.

9  And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
10  And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 

Genesis 3: 9, 10

Adam considered himself rejected, not because God rejected him. It was because he sinned. Jesus became sin, itself, and went through an overwhelming feeling of rejection on the cross. He made a loud cry on the cross, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?’

46  And at three o’clock Jesus shouted with a mighty voice in Aramaic, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”—that is, “My God, My God, why have you deserted me?”

Matthew 27: 46

Jesus’ rejection became our acceptance. He became sin, so we can be made righteous. He became a curse, meaning He was separated from God and all that man had carried as a result of separation, Jesus carried it all. We were blessed in Him. Jesus became our substitution. We  do not find acceptance in God by our own merit. We have been accepted by God in Christ Jesus. No one can please God by religious duty, but all religious duty does is leading us into the fear of never being good enough. You can never get to a place where you feel, you have done enough to please God. Instead, you have received the spirit of full acceptance in Christ Jesus.