christian living on Approval

The Christian who cares only for God’s approval lives free of the tyranny of conformist pressures, relaxed under the steady direction of the God who loves us and gives himself for us. Those who try to...

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

It would be impossible to overestimate the impact these meals must have had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as friends and equals Jesus had taken away their shame, humiliation, and gu...

In his book The Logic of the Spirit, James Loder talks about a woman with whom he had been in a therapeutic relationship for years. This woman’s underlying issue seemed to be a complete sense of rejec...

I don’t know what I did wrong. But he had that “calmer than calm” look that hid a rage inside. I picked up the phone and saw her name. Not now. I can’t handle her right now. I scanned the room, lookin...

Frederick William I was a king of Prussia in the early 18th century. Personality-wise, he was described as exacting, frugal and austere. He was known to beat his children when they disappointed him. H...

Your approval before God is woven into the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, not what other men and women think about you.

To be a blessed person is to know; feel, and relish God’s affirmation and assurance, acceptance, and approval. It is the experience of being chosen and cherished, valued and enjoyed.

We affirm the good news that this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He personally bore our sins in His body on the cross, s...

As Christians, we wake each morning as those who are baptized. We are united with Christ and the approval of the Father is spoken over us. We are marked from our first waking moment by an identity tha...

[Belonging is] the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only ...

As Christians, we do not need to justify who we are; Jesus took care of that. We are loved and forgiven. When I’m tempted to advertise my accomplishments, qualifications, or résumés when talking with ...

How many modern Christians consider dying to be the worst thing that can happen to them? We pray for safety, healing, and protection, and rightly so. However, do we live in the truth that death has tr...

One of the gravest dangers to the Christian faith is its wholesale appropriation of the larger culture. When this happens, the citizens of those places cannot recognize the difference between their cu...

O Lord, come back to us! How long will you delay? Take pity on your servants! Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Give us gladne...

Disciplines done for the wrong reasons actually sabotage transformation and numb us toward God and the truth. When we use spiritual practices to gain secondary things like spiritual cachet, success, a...

In the wilderness, life is stripped of distractions. It is quiet. The topography demands discipline, simplicity, and fierce attention. Solitude in the wilderness makes irrelevant all the people-pleasi...

What happens when a ‘gifted child’ finds himself in a wilderness where he’s stripped of any way of proving his worth? What does he do when there’s nothing he can do, when there’s no audience to applau...

In the wilderness, life is stripped of distractions. It is quiet. The topography demands discipline, simplicity, and fierce attention. Solitude in the wilderness makes irrelevant all the people-pleasi...

The Word of God is clear, it is not that we have accepted God; rather He has accepted us… [Yet many Christians] actually think that they accepted God, and therefore it is only natural for them to thin...

When we accept what happens to us and make the best of it, we are praising God.

Grace frees us from having to earn God’s acceptance by meeting others’ expectations, and it also frees us from the unholy pride and prejudice of determining others’ acceptance by God on the basis of o...

Trust is faith that has become absolute, approved, and accomplished. When all is said and done, there is a sort of risk in faith and its exercise. But trust is firm belief; it is faith in full bloom. ...

Religion says, "I obey; therefore I am accepted." Christianity says, "I’m accepted, therefore I obey."

Now assurance goes far to set a child of God free. . . .It enables him to feel that the great business of life is a settled business, the great debt a paid debt, the great disease a healed disease, an...

Seal. You know the verb. You twist a jar lid to seal the pickles. You lick an envelope to seal the letter. You notarize the contract to seal the deal. Sealing declares ownership and secures contents. ...

Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.

The need for affirmation is spiritual, and the behavior it inspires is religious. The longing for acceptance is at the core of human experience and it shadows all of human history.

Think of a contract. Think perhaps of an employment contract or a memorandum of sale or an IOU. What you hold in your hand is a sheet of paper with a series of commitments written on it. This is what ...

Several times in my ministry people have expressed the fear that self-acceptance will abort the ongoing conversion process and lead to a life of spiritual laziness and moral laxity. Nothing could be m...