acceptance on citizens (secular)

God of Grace and Power—our Friend, who sticks closer than a brother: You know when we screw up ...and You know when we manage to get it right. You know when we forget you ... but You never forget us. ...

A number of women at Kairos Los Angeles have at times assisted a local ministry that helps women who are in transition. They provide housing and often help these women find jobs. Some of these women s...

We didn’t have a lot of rules [at the food pantry at St. Gregory, an Episcopal congregation in San Francisco]. You could be a drunk or junkie, but you couldn’t volunteer if you were high. You couldn’t...

Christians were never meant to be normal. We’ve always been holy troublemakers, we’ve always been creators of uncertainty, agents of dimension that’s incompatible with the status quo; we do not accept...

We may say that in the possession of the Spirit we who are in Christ have a foretaste of the blessings of the age to come, and a pledge and guarantee of the resurrection of the body. Yet we have only ...

Gracious God–who opens Your arms wide to welcome us just as we are but who’s too loving leave us that way: in response to Your invitation we come humbly and boldly with our broken hearts and weak hand...

There is a story of a public sinner who was excommunicated and forbidden from entering the church, He took his woes to God. "They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner." "W...

Pastor: O people, return to the Holy One your God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. All: Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. ...

Preaching Commentary Paul’s Prize Fight Paul pulls no punches in this letter to the church of Ephesus. It is an onslaught of theological intensity from the first ring of the bell. Like a prize figh...

God of grace and glory, compassion and power—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You meet us right where we are at—not asking us to put on any masks, false fronts or airs. You love us just as we are while a...

Do not let your peace depend on the hearts of men; whatever they say about you, good or bad, you are not because of it another man, for as you are, you are.

Leaving Home I moved away from my hometown for graduate school when I was just shy of 30. I never went back. When I struck out from home, I lived in cities larger and more diverse than anything I had...

In the Second World War, a group of soldiers were fighting in the rural countryside of France. During an intense battle, one of the American soldiers was killed. His comrades did not want to leave his...

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

If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.

The day of Jesus’s return will be a wedding feast—and Christians are invited to it not as guests, but as a bride. None of us will have to sneak into heaven through the back door—we’ll be walking up th...

The neighborhood bar is possible the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give his church. It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but...

Preaching Commentary Leaving Home I moved away from my hometown for graduate school when I was just shy of 30. I never went back. When I struck out from home, I lived in cities larger and more dive...

American Christianity tends toward a kind of "easy-believism." The Gospel is often presented in a way that suggests that someone is saved as soon as he or she has "accepted" Jesus ...

Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are

A man named Jim Haynes died last year at 87 years old, in Paris where he’d lived for decades. Jim Haynes was known as the “man who invited the world over for dinner.” Why? Because for more than 40 yea...

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.

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...

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...

The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads to being gentle with others -- and is a natural prerequisite for our presence to God in prayer.”

To pray is to accept that we are, and always will be, wholly dependent on God for everything.

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...

One of the ways we reflect God's love and bring him glory is to accept each other just as he accepts us. This means we accept others' quirks and look past their faults in order to see a person...

It’s an act of our will to choose to see people simply as wildly loved by God, to assume their beauty before guessing their depravity.”

Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic...