Accepting What I Cannot Change
God, grant me the serenity
– to accept the things I cannot change
– the courage to change the things I can
– and the wisdom to know the difference.
– living one day at a time,
– enjoying one moment at a time,
– accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
– taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world, as it is, not as I would have it,
– trusting that you will make all things right as I surrender to Your will,
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen
Accepting my limitations, my flaws, my past, the things that will not, without divine intervention, ever change. VERY HARD. However, it is the ONLY way to ever have peace and serenity.
Serenity:
-Peaceful, serene people exude a sense of calm, fulfillment, and well-being.
–A person cannot be truly serene if she is empty inside, even if no problems are pressing down on her.
-God’s serenity is related to a deep-seated confidence that all the important things in our life are okay, or they are going to be okay, because God is on our side and knows what He permits and why He does so.
–The serene soul rests in the certainty of being loved and cared for by the perfect lover – God Himself.
– The peace we are asking for is not a temporary, passing, depending upon the situation peace. We are looking for the peace that Jesus promised, a DURABLE peace, the peace that passes all understanding (Phil 4:7 – 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.)
– The greatest roadblock to our peace of soul often stems from our unwillingness to truly accept the things we cannot change. Our inability to change them angers us and keeps us from peace.
– When we pray the serenity prayer, WE ARE ASKING FOR GOD’S DIVINE GRACE to empower us to be able to TRULY EMBRACE the things we cannot change, to see them as part of God’s plan for us and a revelation of His love. They are not simply bad luck, and they are not an insurmountable barrier to our happiness or personal fulfillment. In face, having already happened, they are a necessary part of our fulfillment.
– If we choose to focus on things that bother us, we will never be at peace. We will be at the mercy of those around us, unless we decide that these things will not alter our state of mind and heart.
Acceptance:
–Latin word is ACCIPERE, meaning to take something to oneself, to make it one’s own. When we accept gifts offered by others, we receive them gratefully as items coming into our possession. Our acceptance of gifts is the opposite of rejection, the unwillingness to take to ourselves what is offered.
– Acceptance also implies a certain amount of consent, as when we accept an apology or a proposal.
– Acceptance goes well beyond mere resignation. To accept a person into one’s home or circle of friends involves a welcoming disposition, and to accept an idea means to embrace it, assimilate it, and identify with it.
– We need a welcoming attitude toward the difficult realities in our lives that we cannot change.
– It means embracing both the pleasant and the unpleasant realities of our life as the backdrop against which we, with God’s assistance, are working out the drama of our existence. This backdrop has been willed or permitted by God and is perfectly suited to his plan for our ultimate joy.
– Reality is the expression of the Father’s will – His good and perfect will – that is never for our destruction, but always for our good.
(Story of children scribbling on a canvas and the master painter turning it into a work of art.)
– When our major aspiration is to get to heaven and bring as many people as possible with us, then life is quite simple. This simplicity allows us to confront with greater ease whatever comes our way. A committed Christian facing shame or fame, triumph or defeat, sickness or health, financial crisis or wealth, doesn’t have his life turned upside down because these experiences don’t change him and his major aspiration remains within reach.
– Being human means we want to be in control, but we are asking God for the serenity, the peaceful trust in His goodness and plan, to let go of the reins when hanging onto them is doing us no good anyway.
Unchangeable Realities:
– There are so many things we cannot do. These limitations come from logical impossibilities (making a square circle); other times our limitations are physical, and sometimes they are intellectual or moral (or for me, social).
– When we take inventory of our gifts and talents, we often come up short. We find that we lack many of the qualities that other people have, qualities that would be very helpful for our mission in life. We have moral disabilities, flawed characters, and imperfect personalities. And yet, this is how God made us, and He still expects big things of us.
– We need to recognize this imperfect reality – face the facts. There are things in our life that aren’t right. Few people really love their jobs. Marriage, even a good one, is often more difficult than we would have imagined on our wedding day. And our vices and habits, all those things that keep us from being better people, and more successful people, are real and present. As life goes on, these realities force us to revise the dreams and expectations of our youth.
– However, we are so immersed in our own troubles that we can see nothing else. Our difficulties are so evident that they conceal our blessings. When we back away from those troubles, however, we begin to gain a more balanced view of them.
– Our weakness allows us to need others and to take our place before God in the truth of our dependence on Him.
– Since God, by definition, is perfect and does not need us, His desire for us to live through Him, day by day, must be our OUR own good. God may truly wish us to feel insecure in ourselves, so we will find our security in Him alone.
– What if we looked at each day as a gift that proves God’s love for me, and that this day was complete and full with everything I could ever wish for – if I could see it from God’s perspective.
– Our inability to change certain things does not signify idle resignation, or fatality, or defeatism, but rather a bracing realism. We accept the adventure of human life the way it is, in all its splendor and mystery. It challenges us to grow in our confidence in God. He will change what He wants to change, and we must simply work with the rest the way it is, knowing that we are not alone.
– The temptation to distrust, blame, or resent God’s ways is wholly human. If I were God, I would do things differently.
– Acceptance requires a willingness to trust.
– Jeremiah 29:11 says “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plan for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope”.
– If God isn’t doing things my way, I’m the one with poor, shortsighted vision, not Him. We need to give God the benefit of the doubt that He knows what He is doing, that what He has allowed is for the good of the Kingdom as well as myself.
– Somehow, God must be able to turn evil on its head and bring good out of it. When man crucified Jesus, it was our worst act of evil. Yet, through it, God brought the redemption of all mankind. He turned supreme evil into supreme good.
– We really need very little to be successful and happy. (Jesus sending out disciples 2 x 2 without anything (Luke 9:3). Jesus seemed to be more concerned with them taking too much with them, wanting them to rely on God’s provision, not their backpacks.
– God made no mistakes when creating you. You are exactly what he intended for you to be. Everything about you – your parents, your siblings, your moment in history, your neighborhood, your qualities and defects – all of these were allowed by God’s providence. You are known and loved by God, warts and all. Even your defects are used by God. What you find most embarrassing, God now finds essential for your mission in life. What you find to be your greatest weakness, God sees as an opportunity for strength. What you see as an obstacle, God sees as a stepping-stone. 2 Co 12:9,10 “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”
– We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures. We are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son.
– Moses – stutterer; Gideon – lowly farmer; Rahab – prostitute; Samson – a wild, angry, undisciplined, lustful man; Disciples – uncouth fishermen with deep moral flaws, completely unqualified for founding the church. “God has chosen the foolish things to confound the wise” (1 Cor 1:27)
– Acceptance entails REPRIORITIZING our concerns and to realize that most of what troubles us really doesn’t deserve so much of our emotional energy, and that what really does matter could use more of it. What distresses me the most and robs me of peace of soul? Is it really as important as I make it out to be? Most issues are forgotten quickly in hours, days, weeks as we are distracted by other things in life.
We can choose to focus on what He has NOT given us, or focus on what He HAS given us – to accomplish His specific will for us in His Kingdom. If we focus on what we don’t have, we will become bitter. If we focus on what we DO have, we will become grateful, peaceful, positive.