Clap For Me

A while back I came home from work and my wife was watching Dr. Phil. He had a lady on who was an addict. She gave him a hard time telling him that she didn’t really like him at all. He replied, “That’s O.K. because what you think of me does not affect my self-esteem in the least.”

I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t that be nice if we all could think that way?” The problem is we don’t. We are all looking for approval. Some of us are athletes, others are teachers or physicians, some are extremely intelligent, good speakers or just good looking; a few of us are rich or powerful, but in some crazy way we are all trying to get people to clap for us. We want people to cheerus and say that we are normal, healthy, moral, upright and good. And it’s not just that we want to hear it from someone, but many someones. And much more than we want to love someone, we want to be loved.

I know it’s easy to sit here and generalize, but the truth is I want to be loved. I want people to think I am not a loser. I want someone to redeem me from my pitiful little life and treat me as if I were wonderfully important and I want them, YOU to let me have my own way. Listen, though, to Eugene Peterson’s commentary/translation of Galatians 5:19-21 (It’s from the translation called “The Message:”

"It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom."

(The English Standard Version says it this way: "Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.")

We know this and yet we keep on with our selfish lives. At the same time, we don’t want to live these selfish lives. We want redemption…HOPE…PEACE. And the wonderful thing is, and in our better moments we know this, WE HAVE IT! We have redemption and the good part is it doesn’t depend upon how good we are or how much we are liked or if anyone claps for us at all. It depends upon the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross and that is why we can be assured of salvation. All we have to do is depend upon Him. He paid the price. He took the loneliness of the cross; He took the beatings meant for us; He took the humiliation and the shame of it all so that we might know, above all things, that we are loved and wanted. So that we might know HOW MUCH we are loved and wanted. And so that we might be redeemed from our little lives and adopted into the family of God.

Of all things we ought to be thankful for at this time of the year and always, it is for the assurance of that genuine love and the salvation it has brought to us. John says to us:

1 John 5:11-13 (ESV)
"And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life."

Knowing this…being assured of this, let’s be thankful.