Lord, Accept me as I am
From: <The Editor - Local Host Glenn
Williams> : : // Lord, Accept me as I am<
If only God could accept me for me; just as I am and no other way. For if it could be that way then I feel that all in the world would be right and just, and then I could be cool with that and me and God could bump knuckles or give high five’s on that one. The responding small voice from the Church said “God accepts you just as you are. He loves you as you are and no change is required. So come on in and sit for a while till God calls you home just as you are.”
So come on in Charles Manson. Come on in Adolph Hitler and come on in John Wayne Gacy because God loves you as you are. Just sit for a while as you are till God calls you home.
If only God could accept me for the trouble I get in from time to time. The drugs, the pornography, the lying, stealing and various other issues I dare not speak of, then me and God could be really cool. Once again the responding voice from the Church said “ God accepts you just as you are. He loves you as you are and no change is required. So come on in and sit for a while till God calls you home just as you are.”
So come on in Ken Lay (Enron crook), Sigmund Freud (liked his cocaine), Mark Foley (Gay pedophile) and O.J Simpson (didn’t do a thing) because God loves you as you are. Just sit for a while as you are till God calls you home.
But you are being too hard on these people, calling out their crimes like that. Besides some of them changed, they repented and do not walk that way anymore.
What? They repented? How strange and how absurd that seems. Because the voice from the Church said “God accepts you just as you are. He loves you as you are and no change is required. So come on in and sit for a while till God calls you home just as you are.”
In the Bible there is someone called the Son of God. In His day He taught the people to repent and to change their ways. And so did His cousin John and other followers of this Man, Peter and Paul. Somehow their voice seems so different than that of the Church. They expect change, the following of rules and other odd things that are so different than what the Churches say but I don’t know.
In an old book of laws called an agreement that the Church says is null and void there are some writings that have hard words saying “Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you today and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God” Again, I don’t know because those old writings and the men of the modern Bible sure seem to contradict the Church.
Lucky for me that I got the Church on my side, so next week I’ll attend again in my dirty shirt and favorite old jeans. This will be quite unlike a guy name Aaron who couldn’t come into the Holy place dressed anyway he wanted. But I guess that’s just tough for someone in one of those odd un-accepting Churches. Glad I got the real Church on my side so I don't have to change.
See you next time around, it’ll be the same old me till God calls me home just the way I am.
Part II
Does God Accept you as you are?
It's a familiar teaching among many of the mainstream Churches. God accepts you as you are. There is no call for change, remorse or repentance. All one has to do is call on the name of Jesus, feel some self-pity and they’re in with the Lord. This plays well on the human psyche. The Churches teach this, mankind likes it, but God does not. God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways”.
God Requires Change
Coming to the Father is an act of seeking repentance. We are saying, “not my ways, but Your ways O’ Great Eternal.” We seek His side of the fence and His rules. Yet many want to think that God accepts you as you are when the fact is that He will not accept you as you are or as you were. God requires change. Change from sin to obedience. As we stand at the door knocking, we need a mindset to discard our old ways and put on the new. As Christ said, “new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved”, or given eternal life. But when we cling to the old Christ says the, “new wine will burst the [old ways] wineskins”.
Change to what?
This Church teaches one thing loud and clear, “obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments”. This is what it is all about. From the beginning of the books to the end, we find God’s converted clinging to the law. From Noah who, “was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God”, not against God, through all the patriarchs like David who said, “how I love Your law”, Christ’s teaching that “if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” until the last book of the Bible showing, “the patience of the saints … those who keep the commandments of God”.
This world has a tail wag the dog mentality in its so-called Christian teachings. The ever clear “not Your ways, but our ways.”
From teaching others to break the true seventh day Sabbath, through honoring pagan festivities like Christmas and Easter all the while ignoring God’s seven annual Holy days. In these things we pollute temple, driving God far from us. God says, “They have set their abominations in the house which is called by My name, to pollute it.”
God says, “keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them”. Salvation and eternal life is by obedience and cannot be obtained when we say, “God accepts us as we are”. That idea is of Satan. It is an idea of rebellion. David said, “They did not keep the covenant of God; They refused to walk in His law” for “they do not change” because “they do not fear God.” Therefore though it may appeal to the flesh, God does not accept the rebellious who say, “Lord accept me as I am.”
