Living From God's Approval Instead of Working For It

The text comes in at 9:14 p.m. Great job this morning.

You read it twice. Then you set the phone on the counter and go back to the dishes, and while your hands are in the water you go over the whole thing. The prayer you led. The place your voice caught. The sentence you would take back. By the time the sink is empty you have graded yourself, and the grade is lower than the text.

You do this with God too. A good day of prayer and you feel His face turned toward you. A day you forgot, or snapped at the kids, or skipped the chapter, and you feel Him turn a few degrees away, and you spend the next morning earning Him back.

Nobody taught you this. It just seemed like how it worked.

Here is what I want to show you. The verdict you keep working toward has already been read aloud, and it was read over Someone else first.

The short answer: To live from God’s approval instead of for it is to start each day already accepted, not working toward acceptance. The Father said over Jesus, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17), before Jesus had preached a sermon or healed anyone, and Paul says that same acceptance is yours: God “made us accepted in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1:6) You do not work toward the verdict. You work from it.

A Voice Before the Work

Go to the river. Jesus is thirty years old and has done nothing anyone wrote down. No sermon. No miracle. No disciples. He walks into the Jordan, John baptizes Him, and as He comes up out of the water the sky opens: “And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’” (Matthew 3:17)

Notice the order. The approval comes first. The work comes after. Every healing, the garden, the cross, all of it was done by a Son who already knew what His Father thought of Him. He did not earn the voice. He lived from it for three years.

That is the pattern. Not a man working toward a verdict, but a Son living out of one.

The Word for Already Accepted

Now Paul. Ephesians opens with a long sentence about what God did before you were born, and in the middle of it comes this: “to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1:6)

“Made us accepted” is one Greek word, charitoō. It is built on charis, grace, and it means to bestow grace on someone, to favor them, to grace them. It appears only twice in the whole New Testament. The other time is Gabriel’s greeting to Mary, where he calls her “highly favored one” (Luke 1:28). Same word. What the angel said to Mary at the start of the story, Paul says God has done to you.

And look where He did it. “In the Beloved.” That is Jesus. The One the voice spoke over at the river. You are not accepted beside Him, on your own record. You are accepted inside Him, on His. Which means the voice at the Jordan is the voice over you. This is My beloved. In this one I am well pleased. Paul says it a few lines earlier: God chose you in Him “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). Before you had anything to show.

Zephaniah heard that same voice from the far side of judgment, a God who rejoices over His people with singing, and that verse has its own guide: what Zephaniah 3:17 means.

No Condemnation, Said Whole

The verse people reach for here is Romans 8:1, and it should be quoted whole, because the second half is where the fear hides: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1)

Read the second half and the old reflex says, There it is. A condition. But look at what Paul is describing. Walking according to the Spirit is not the price of being in Christ. It is what being in Christ looks like from the outside. A person who has been joined to Jesus walks differently, and when she stumbles she is still joined to Jesus. The verdict was never no condemnation, provided you perform. It was no condemnation for those who are in Him. And you are in Him.

That is where the whole Already Held series starts, with how to rest in God. You cannot rest until you know the verdict is in. Once you know it is in, you can hardly do anything else.

The Journal With the Gaps

He’s pleased with me on the days I show up. You would never preach it. But you believe it around 6:00 a.m. She is a mother of three who has kept a prayer journal for nine years, every entry dated. Tonight she flipped back through March looking for something she had written and found instead the nine days she missed when the youngest had the flu. Blank pages. Her eye went straight past the eighty filled ones to the blank.

She sat on the edge of the bed with the book open on her knees and read the gap like a report card.

Scripture to Live From

Keep these where you do your grading: the sink, the drive home, the edge of the bed.

• “And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’” (Matthew 3:17)
• “to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1:6)
• “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1)
• “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
• “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

A Prayer to Live From His Approval

You may be at the sink right now with the phone face down beside you. Here is one thing to do. Before you grade the day, say the verdict out loud, I am accepted in the Beloved. Then pray this.

Father, I have been working toward a word You already spoke. I have measured Your nearness by my mornings and Your pleasure by my performance, and I have been wrong about You. You made me accepted in the Beloved. You said over Him, before He had done anything, that You were well pleased, and You have put me inside Him. So I am laying down the report card. I will not earn today what You gave before the world was made. Let me walk in the Spirit, not to win Your face, but because Your face is already turned toward me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

If you want the Father’s own voice on this for more than one evening, Already Held was written for the believer who has loved God with everything and still felt behind.

And listen for what He said before you had anything to show Him:

You are My beloved. I was pleased with you before you did a thing, and I am pleased with you now.

You do not work toward the verdict. You live from it.