The Approval Addict
Search for Significance • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
In our search for significance, one of the areas that we may fall into a trap is in the area of approval. Many find their significance in what others think about them. Basing our self worth on what others think about us will make us do things just to get that approval. There are those also that feel they need to be so controlling in our lives that they will manipulate us in doing all kinds of things. In fact, Dr. Robert McGee, the author of The Search for Significance, wrote, “We live in a world filled with people who demand we please them in exchange for their approval and acceptance.”
Maybe you have found yourself doing things to get the approval of someone else. I mean, we all like to get that “atta boy” or that “way to go!” It feels good to get that approval. Just like many other things that feel good, we want to get more of it. The idea of gaining approval becomes an addiction and before long, we are going down a path that says we have to do this or do that in order to have our significance.
This is one of satan’s greatest schemes. Our approval addiction becomes so strong, that we inevitably cannot bear to think of ourselves as unapproved and we fear rejection. The fear of rejection and loneliness is at an all time high in our country today. There are many reasons, but being isolated and limited because of a pandemic has not helped. It is not new, though, as it has been around since the beginning of mankind. Years ago, Psychologist Eric Fromm wrote, “The deep need of man is the need to overcome separateness and leave the prison of his aloneness.”
Those of you that garden or work with flowers know that whatever gets watered and fertilized grows. When we allow our need for approval to get watered and fertilized, we are allowing it to ripen and often bear fruit.
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
The results that come from from what is sown and what ripens unfortunately does not fill the void that the addiction to approval creates. It produces this formula that becomes quite scary:
Self Worth = Performance + Other’s Opinions
If you take this formula and try to determine your significance, you will find that some how, you will always come up short. You are not going to be on your A-game every time. You are not make everyone happy. So by trying to fill your void with this, you are opening yourself up for rejection which leads to a host of other issues.
This rejection is going to lead to anger, resentment and hostility. Then to try to fix it, you will become easily manipulated because you will do virtually anything to please people in order to fix it. The next thing that comes from this is becoming codependent on someone or some thing to help you get your approval. A whole series of psychological problems can stem from this process, all because you are trying to find approval.
Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Who are you trying to please? According to the passage, we are going to ultimately seek the approval of mankind or the approval of God. We cannot do both. God desires to be the Lord of our lives.
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
This means that we cannot share that lordship with anyone else. God knew when He created mankind that this was going to be a problem. Again, in His great wisdom, God gave us a remedy for our approval addiction! God has already given you and I approval through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ! We do not have to look for it anywhere else!
The Reconciliation of the Giver
The Reconciliation of the Giver
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—
Reconciliation explains the relational aspect of our salvation. It is a theological term that means to bring back to a former state of harmony. It can be best defined this way:
“Reconciliation is God removing the barrier of sin, producing peace and enabling mankind to be saved.”
God is the one that initiates change. He moved to reconcile sinful humanity to Himself. This was God’s desire!
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
It was that mankind had moved out of fellowship with God. Therefore, man needed to be restored. God’s desire was to restore all of mankind. That was His destiny. God wanted to be with His people and fellowship with His people.
The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through this vast desert. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have not lacked anything.
God’s destiny is to hear His people, be near them and meet their needs.
What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?
God could have found mankind insignificant. Do you think God needs us? Not at all. God wants us! In His desire and destiny for us, God did what theologians call a divine reversal. He took an exception to the law and made a new righteousness.
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
The Law of God we see in the Old Testament proclaimed the reconciliation of God in the New Testament! Do you think we have as a result the approval of God?
We should celebrate our freedom from the addiction of approval
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
What a Giver of Reconciliation our God is!
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
The Divine Reversal means just what our passage from Colossians 1:21-22 are stating to us. We were once alienated from God. This means, according to this passage, we were enemies. I don’t know about you, but I never want to be lumped into the thought of being an enemy with God! Because of our evil behavior, we and mankind were alienated. We were estranged, shut out from His fellowship and intimacy. But God chose to un-alienate us! He chose make us significantly significant!
God does a divine reversal on each one of us!
The Reconciliation of the Gift
The Reconciliation of the Gift
God did just that through Jesus His Son.
But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—
God allowed an indescribable act, one never duplicated since, for this to happen. God provided His only Son to be my substitute.
Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
There has never been a more precious gift. There has never been another such an indescribable gift. I do not have to worry about what someone says about my bank account. I do not have to worry about what someone says about my performance. I do not have to worry about what someone says about who I am as a person. The one that is the giver of life has acted on my behalf. The one that is the giver of the very breath I take has given me the greatest gift of all. I have been given an incredible sacrifice and His Name is Jesus. Jesus, the One who was holy in the sight of God, without blemish and free from accusation, became the sacrifice so I could be holy in the sight of God, without blemish and free from accusation. The Ultimate Priest gave the ultimate sacrifice which in turn gives me the ultimate approval.
But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.
The reconciliation of the gift I have received gives me an inseparable bond.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Reconciliation of the Gifted
The Reconciliation of the Gifted
Not only are we given this inseparable bond, we have a received a gift with this reconciliation. I am accepted, no matter what I have done, where I have done it, or who I have done it with. Even when I was unacceptable, I have been made acceptable in the eyes of God because of this gift I have been given.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you,
I am accepted and I am accused no more.
Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.
The Gift of Reconciliation that you and I have received means that we are approved.
I do not have to worry about anything I face including the opinion of others. The Gift I have received made the decision before I was in my mother’s womb that I was worth it. He decided that there was nothing too big in my life nor too shameful that makes me unapproved.
Dr. Robert McGee shared an exercise of how we can apply this great truth of reconciliation. I have used this over the years as a beautiful reminder of this idea. We all are familiar with First Corinthians 13 that describes God’s unconditional love and acceptance of us. I want to invite you to personalize this passage and replace the word LOVE with the words MY FATHER. Memorize it. Meditate on it. Recall the love and kindness of the Giver who has gifted you with His gift and love.
My Father is very patient and kind.
My Father is not envious, never boastful.
My Father is not arrogant.
My Father is never rude, nor is My Father self-seeking.
My Father is not quick to take offense.
My Father keeps no score of wrongs.
My Father does not gloat over my sins, but is always glad when truth prevails.
My Father knows no limit to His endurance, no end to His trust.
My Father is always hopeful and patient.
I encourage you to use this reminder until you do not need to be reminded. I also invite you to hear this: you are approved. You are loved. You are the apple of His eye. There is no greater approval than this.