“Clean Up Your Room. Like A Good Boy”

If you’re a guy older than six, you’ve heard, “Clean up your room like a good boy”, or something akin to it, a bazillion times. Ladies, your husbands have all heard it too.

It’s a harmful thing to tell a little boy or girl they’ll be good for doing something. Certainly encouraging boys or girls to clean up their room has its merits. If they’ll do it, it teaches them responsibility; or it ought to. I think my mom gave up on me having my room picked up when I reached high school.

Good is bad.

What the child learns is that to feel accepted, to gain mom’s (or dad’s) approval, they must perform. They must do something. And if the child does not clean their room, they automatically think they are bad and therefore not accepted. Many children who hear they must perform a certain way to be accepted (and acceptable) grow into adults who believe their friends, family and co-workers will measure their worth and value by what they do. Not who they are in Christ. Consequently, they exhaust themselves trying to be a “good” person, a “good” wife or husband, a “good” worker, a “good” parent, a “good” friend, and saddest of all, a “good” Christian. Their performance-based-acceptance lifestyle many times leads to chronic frustration, emotional upheaval, despair, anxiety, stress and depression. It never leads to peace.

It is particularly sad, to me, to watch folks who call themselves Christians who buy into satan’s lie about performance. Sometimes these folks acquire their concept of God from this performance mindset. They read the Bible, pray, go to church (like they believe they should) to gain God’s approval. And they never get it.  Let me repeat that:  they—never—-get—God’s—approval.

How To Gain God’s Approval

You never will. Just like I said. Try as hard as you will, you will never gain God’s approval.

And there’s a good reason why . . .

You Already Have It!

The moment you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, God accepted you just like you are and welcomed you into His eternal family. It’s part of the package. It’s part of the whole enchilada! See, along with the salvation you receive at the cross, there’s a whole bunch of other things you get as well. Acceptance as a child of God is one of them.

But . . .I Still Do Bad Things

Yes, you do. And you always will as long as you live in your earth suit.  Satan will continue to put thoughts of condemnation in your mind when  you sin. When you do bad things Satan is right there to tell you you’re a bad person for doing bad things. Oh, I can hear him now,  “You didn’t clean up your room like your mom told you to, Steve. You didn’t obey her. You did a bad thing. That makes you a bad person. Satan is always going to point out the bad things we do. He does not forgive. He does not show mercy. He can’t. He reminds us repeatedly of our sins, even the ones we committed long ago.

When we do good things, Satan tells us we are a good person for doing good things. And he encourages us to try to be better. He wants us to strive to be better people. If he can convince us we’re a bad person when we do bad things, and a good person when we do good things, then we can glow with pride at the good things we do. Satan loves to get us in a mindset of thinking right and wrong. Black and white. Good and bad.  That kind of thinking takes our focus off God and puts is squarely on ourselves. We move from God-centered thinking to self-centered thinking. From grace to law. Then, when we do bad things we beat ourselves up. We condemn ourselves. We tell ourselves we need to do more, study more, pray more, go to church more, volunteer more. So we can get back in God’s graces.

The truth is, we never left God’s graces or His acceptance. We’ve always had them. And we’ll never lose them.Did you enjoy reading “Clean Your Room Like A Good Boy” today? If you enjoyed reading, why not subscribe to my blog? It’s simple. Just go to my home page. In the upper right corner click on Follow Blog Via Email and enter your email address. That way you’ll receive an email notification each time I publish a new blog post. Thank you again for stopping by. May God bless you richly today.