Acceptance

He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.

‭‭Acts of the Apostles‬ ‭17:24-26‬ ‭NLT‬‬

God is sovereign — this must be taken as fact. He is in all and above all, and nothing happens without His divine knowledge. His wisdom is beyond human comprehension. Infinite, omnipotent, everlasting — we try to describe it, but we probably do not even have the right words that encompass such greatness.

That’s why staunch unbelievers, those that oppose the reality of God, can lay down their arguments all day long. They can rationalise and insist that they have the data, and they have the logic, and they have the science; that they have everything necessary to “prove” that God is not who He is. They can do that until their lips turn blue. But as long as they don’t believe in God’s sovereignty, they will never understand, nor even come close to it. All their arguments float away in the wind; their words do not have power. God is more powerful than any reason that anyone can come up with.

And so the first step in a relationship with God is to accept. To admit one’s inferior status as a sinner. To acknowledge God as Lord over all. To accept this God in one’s heart, and in all humility, submit to His power, surrender to His love.

There are two ways of looking at this:

1. This is the easiest thing in the world to do.

   Think about it. All you have to do is say ‘yes’. All you have to do is concede to the age old belief that God created the world, and that He loves us. All you have to do is to believe that Jesus Christ, a commonly accepted part of human history, spent a part of His life on earth, and at the end of it, died for our sins. And that the Holy Spirit is a part of God that He sent so that everyone who receives Him will always have a spirit guide and counselor.

   All you have to give up is your pride, and what did that ever serve you in the first place? Your happiness, contentment, sense of security, self-worth — all of these remain intact. If you do it right, they are even amplified.

   You have nothing to lose, and all the heavens to gain.

2. This is the hardest thing in the world to do.

   Accepting God implies that you have given up the notion that you have, or have ever had, a hand in the creation of the universe. Or, at the very least, the current state of the culture and environment in which you are living. For control freaks, this is an anxiety inducing reality.

   Accepting God’s rule also means that He has total control over your life. Of course, this acceptance is inclusive of the fact of His love, so it doesn’t equate to Him allowing bad things to you happen to you. But it does mean accepting that the bad things that happen to you might be a direct consequence of your own actions, and not just a random quirk of an uncaring, faceless and baseless universe.
   
   I’m biased of course. Because both of those perspectives really only point to one ultimate unquestionable reality.

So either way, whether you think it is the hardest thing, or the easiest thing, why don’t you just go ahead and take that first step.