You Can’t Meet Your Own Needs for Love, Acceptance, Worth and Security

God created you with certain needs of the heart which only He can fully meet.  I, and my staff have seen that these needs are universal, whether here in the USA, or in places like Zimbabwe, Chile, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Croatia, Ukraine or England. 

Every person needs love because God is love.  Every person needs acceptance because that is what unconditional love from God truly is.  Every person needs worth because we are valuable enough for God to create us and for Jesus to die for us.  Everyone needs security because we need to know we can’t mess up the love we have and only God’s grace in Christ can provide that.  We use the acronym LAWS to help people remember their needs.

I want you to imagine four plastic buckets sitting in front of you.  Each one has a different name on it.  The first says LOVE.  The second says ACCEPTANCE.  The third says WORTH.  The fourth says SECURITY.  God made you to live with those buckets full.  In fact, you can’t live very well unless they are full.  Yet, because we don’t know they are already full, we work hard at trying to fill them ourselves. 

What are some of the ways we do this?  We may perform so people will like us.  We may manipulate people.  We may expect people to meet these needs such as in marriage and when they don’t, we get angry and start an argument.  We may look on Facebook to see what people are saying about us.  We may try to get our kids to meet these needs by making us proud for the wrong reasons.  We may try sex outside of marriage.  We may fantasize through porn.  In other words, we try to control our personal universe by living independently of God, by looking to others or things in trying  to meet these needs.

God says it this way in Jeremiah 2:13.  For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, To hew for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns That can hold no water. (NASB)

God was speaking of Israel at the time, but it’s still an applicable illustration of what our flesh wants to try to do for us.  First, we turn away from our real Source who will abundantly satisfy our heart like living waters.  Second, we work hard to get our buckets filled but our buckets have holes in them just like Israel’s cisterns did.  (A cistern was a hole you dug into the ground and hoped rain water would fill so you could have water to satisfy your thirst.  But Israel’s had cracks in them so that the water didn’t stay very long.)

You can’t satisfy your own needs for God given LAWS, no matter how hard you work or who you try to get to meet them.  The little that you do strive for will not last and you will have to go out and work hard the next day to get it again.

If you are a Christ follower, you are united to the God who is love and He created you so He could love you.  Do you believe that?  We all get tested in this area when someone disappoints us or we disappoint ourselves.

Why don’t you thank God this week that He is the only one who can adequately meet those needs and ask Him to make them real in you?

Believe it! It's the Gospel.

Live Free In Christ,

Mark Maulding, President and Founder

www.GraceLifeInternational.com All Content Copyright © 2015 Mark Maulding but feel free to pass it on!

Do You Accept Yourself and Is It Biblical?

When your life becomes difficult and you believe you just have to talk to someone, what kind of person do you look for? Most of us not only want someone who may have wisdom for our situation but we also search for a person who will accept us no matter what we tell them.

Maybe we believe God loves us and are able to rest in His love for us. Maybe you have even gone so far as to really believe your Heavenly Father accepts you regardless of what you do. But have you taken the next step? Do YOU accept yourself?

Just as it is often more difficult to forgive ourselves than it is to forgive others, it is also more difficult to accept ourselves even though we accept others. This is not only true for the typical Christian; it is also true for Christian leaders. How do I know? Well, first, I was one of them many years ago. I have not been a pastor of a local church in 20 years but I now spend some of my time mentoring, counseling and coaching pastors. Inevitably, this topic rolls around during our conversation. Christian leaders have just as much difficulty accepting themselves as the rest of us. So, why do we struggle so much with this?

It is because we are focused on the wrong criteria for accepting ourselves. Here is what we tend to do. We examine our lives and think about the positive and negative things we do. If we are honest, we hope that we can "score ourselves" in the positive. Some of us inflate that score in our minds so we can accept ourselves. That is prideful. Most of us realize that regardless of the score, there are things about us that we just don't like. So we just cannot accept ourselves.

Let's change our focus. If you have read my previous devotions, hopefully you are convinced God accepts you because He made you acceptable when He gave you His righteousness. It is His acceptance of us that gives us the ability to accept ourselves! Because He accepts us, that is the basis of us accepting ourselves.

Here is what I want you to do this week. I want you to pray something like this often. "Father because you accept me, I accept me." It may feel uncomfortable at first but as the week rolls on, I think you will experience a deeper peace. Do not mistake this for positive thinking as some books teach. This is positive believing in what God declares is true....He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on my behalf, so that I might become the righteousess of God in Him. (2nd Cor. 5:21)

Until next time, remember, He loves us! 

Live Free In Christ, Mark Maulding, President Founder GraceLifeInternational.com

Does God Really Accept Us Unconditionally?

In our ministry we have asked many Christians through the years if they grew up feeling loved.  The majority have answered in the affirmative.  The next question though is often answered differently.  Let me ask you that question.  "Did you feel accepted growing up?"  Think about that for a minute.  I am not asking if people said they accepted you.  The question is "Did you 'feel' accepted?" 

One of the deep God-given needs of the human heart is to feel accepted.  Acceptance is the unconditional part of love.  It means that when someone accepts us, there are no conditions upon that acceptance.  We can't mess it up by making a mistake, committing a sin or failing.  There is no human being in our lives who can meet this need for us completely. 

However, God is able to accept all those who are in Christ through faith.  The question is "why does He accept us?"  Is it simply because He is kind, merciful and full of grace so that He overlooks our faults and sins?  While He is all of these and more, there is another very important reason He accepts who we are in Christ.  It is because through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, He has made all of us who have faith in His son 100% righteous! 

What is righteousness?  It means to be right, to be perfect, to be perfect in character.  God's righteousness is the perfection of all of His character.  Amazingly, through our faith in His Son, God removes the unrighteousness of our past, present and future sins.  He also, replaces our sinner identity with a righteous identity. 

2nd Corinthians 5:21 says it this way.  "God made Him who knew no sin to become sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."  Wow!  Do you see the divine exchange which occurred?  Jesus Christ became our sin on the cross and we became as righteous as God!  That is, God gave us His perfect character in exchange for our sin.  This does not mean He gave us His deity though.  We are and will always be humans.

God's gift of righteousness is the reason He can accept you.  This has made you 100% acceptable to Him!  You can't diminish that righteousness by sinning nor increase it through obedience.  I urge you to believe it, because you will be in agreement with God's Word. 

Be Free In Christ, Mark Maulding, President Founder 
Grace Life International  www.GraceLifeInternational.com