A Sense of Security and Acceptance – Part 1

Old Testament heroes like Abraham, David and Joseph had powerful, intimate relationships with God. God cut a special covenant with Abram and made powerful promises to him. Abraham was blessed abundantly by God and this, I believe, gave him a great sense of security and right-standing with God.

I personally believe that it is a sense of security, a lack of fear (unbelief), which subdues the sinful nature and allows God to move freely in a person’s life, resulting in divine blessing and favour.

This sense of security and acceptance can be produced by hearing the message of God’s unconditional love for us through Christ. We are to labour to enter into rest (Hebrews 4:11). This rest that the Bible speaks of is a sense of overwhelming peace that can only come about as the result of knowing that we are accepted and loved by God, just the way we are, not because of anything that we have done, but because of what Christ has already done for us. The only condition for righteousness is that we believe in the finished work of the cross and no longer look to our works and rule-keeping for our justification.

It is this sense of security that God wants each and every person to develop by hearing and meditating upon the message of the Gospel, which is His Word for us today who believe in Christ. If we do not have this sense of security – we will be anxiously driven to seek an elusive something that will satisfy us and make us feel a sense of security, significance and self-worth.

Life Induced Security

A sense of security can also be instilled in a person when life seems to go well for them. People can become conditioned to trust in life, their own ability and other people. This is not the kind of security that God wants His children to have. I have noticed that there are some Christians who have a love for others and may even serve in the church enthusiastically – but I get the feeling that their sense of security has been instilled in them through positive life experiences, including the encouragement and acceptance of others.

God wants His people to have a sense of security that comes about as the result of truly knowing in their heart, who they are in Christ. So when the disappointments of life do come – they are able to overcome them because of the overwhelming sense of God’s love for them and an indefatigable hope in Him.

Accumulated disappointments, dashed hopes and calamities can eventually wear-down a person’s resolve and leave them heart-broken and afraid. Proverbs 13:12 says: Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life. The Message translation renders it: Unrelenting disappointment leaves you heartsick, but a sudden good break can turn life around. Life can literally make a person desperate and afraid or it can fill them with peace of mind, confidence and hope – it all depends on how a person reacts to their environment.

Conditioning

One of the greatest things I have learned in life is the concept of conditioning.

Conditioning falls into two categories:

• Classical Conditioning, is a type of associative learning.
• Operant Conditioning, a psychological phenomenon involving voluntary behaviour.

The conscious mind is just like a window into the vastly more powerful subconscious mind (subconscious means “below consciousness”). Everything that we experience from the five senses gets fed into the mind, where each thought is classified and filed into what could be described as a massive filing system. Then, when we have a thought which is in some way related to a previous thought we have had, that thought is then strengthened and diversified so that it has more control and influence over us through our emotions. Related thoughts become grouped together in clusters which are known as complexes. Complexes become larger and more diverse as clusters of thought become related to each other, often through the most trivial means.

This is a phenomenon which is exploited by people who use advanced memory techniques for the recall of information. One such example is remembering the French word for cabbage which is chou (pronounced “shoe”) – so you would imagine a cabbage growing out of a shoe.

Our lives are literally the product of all the thoughts that we have ever thought. It seems that overriding all of our negative thoughts is the hardest thing in the world to do.