Series: Committed 
Message: Acceptance
Preacher: Japhet De Oliveira

Refresh: Open with prayer. Read or listen to Psalm 59:14-17.

Read: John 6:22-59 — As you read in the ESV translation, note 1-3 insights/questions that arise.

Reflect: A commitment to acceptance means being absolutely willing to accept all that God has called you to do and to cope with in your life—including other people. This is an incredibly tall order for most of us—and involves a tremendous struggle, often on a daily basis. We desperately want acceptance ourselves and yet we struggle to freely offer it to others. God is constantly reaching forward and offering us His acceptance, and yet we reject it—simply because we do not like the terms. This week, as we explore the Daily Walk together, we will process three areas of acceptance and their implications. 
Acceptance of God.
God’s acceptance of us.
Our acceptance of others. 
As you read the passage, did you feel the need to start at verse 1? To skip backwards and gather some context, such as what happened the day before? I could not resist doing that myself. Just the day before, Jesus had turned a little boy’s five loaves and two fish into a meal for a crowd of 5,000 men. Most likely these men were accompanied by wives and children, so that number could double easily. The result of this visible blessing was the overwhelming recognition that Jesus must be some kind of prophet. No that he was part of the Trinity. But the crowd had no doubt that He was a religious man of influence. By the time we get to John 6:15, they want to make him king. In fact, they are willing to take him by force and make him king. The crowd of followers (John 6:2), had become an entire village and the village had become a lobby group and the lobby group had turned into a mob make Jesus their political leader—King—by force if necessary. They had no authority to do this; they simply longed for someone else to rule them and they wanted to decide who that  person would be. No matter the cost. This was not because they accepted Jesus, but because they accepted and embraced a particular model of leadership and needed the round peg to fit into their preordained square hole. They wanted to force Jesus into their paradigm of leadership. 

Recalibrate: ​ 

1. What area of your life is the most difficult for you to accept: career, education, relationships?

Respond: Pray for more capacity for acceptance.

Research: Watch Andrew Solomon: Love, No Matter What.