Acceptance Avenue

This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it! My girls will tell you this really IS something I say all the time. Rejoice. In the NIV translation, “rejoice” is used 156 times. And a large majority of these are God TELLING us TO rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! And often, it is paired with “and be glad.”



So this leads me to think about “nature vs nurture” and about resisting our “flesh nature.” You see, my Mom’s side of the family, on her father’s side, are almost 100% crabby old farts. Really. I mean that. They are not mean spirited or ugly towards people. They are just generally negative people. Growing up, I took this VERY personally. But now, as an adult, I tend to find it funny. When my Mom (who I love more than my luggage, by the way!) is in one of her particularly crabby moods, I’ll often just say, “Well, you’re an old hag today, huh?!” We just laugh about it and it usually causes her mood to lift and she stops being so, well, crabby.



But when I really think about this, I know that this, too, is what my “natural” nature is: to be crabby and negative. Before I accepted the Lord into my heart and the Holy Spirit of God into my being, I know that I was on the same road. And really, it was so much a part of who I was and how I was raised that I didn’t even NOTICE. But now that I am a new creation in Christ, He has taken me off the Hag Highway and put me on a different road. Do I still have that tendency toward negativity? Oh, yes! But with Christ in me, I find that I NOTICE now when I am approaching the on ramp to the H-Highway, and I choose not to get on, and instead, I try to stay on Acceptance Avenue, where I know that God wants me to be. And when I look at who HE is, and how He accepts ME, with all my flaws and failures, I should be a little more willing to stay on His road. Do I always succeed? No, I sure don’t. But I know that I do have the Holy Spirit as my Navigator, and with His help, I’m trying harder than ever to let Him lead.