Finding acceptance beyond achievements

by Bret Skaer, Professional Counselor in Training
This article is also available as a printable handout here.

God wants us to use our gifts and talents to the best of our abilities and to give God the glory for our victories.

What happens when we don’t win or achieve the “A”? It can be difficult to accept our mistakes because we often tie our value to the success of our work. Doing so can help us stay motivated to succeed and overcome obstacles. Unfortunately, it may also provide an identity of importance – that we are important because of our success.

We cannot effectively support our self-worth by expecting every outcome to feed our value. A student will make a mistake on an assignment and get a bad grade. An athlete will miss their shot and lose a game. A co-worker will get that promotion instead of you. When we fail, blame and shame are often our first instincts. When we connect a failure to our identity and value, the feelings of blame and shame grow stronger. Blame and shame push us away from accepting the failure and isolate us from those who could support us through our discomfort with the failure.

As  parents, coaches, teachers, and leaders we can remind others (and ourselves) of the source of our value:

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1)

Our value and acceptance come from our status as children of God. He has blessed each one of us with talents and abilities. We know that God does not give everyone the same gifts, but He will bless our effort when we use them and work with dedication and perseverance.

So, we can praise God for first loving us and making us His own dear children.

And we can praise Him for providing talents and abilities.

Then, we can appropriately praise people for their effort to use those talents and abilities. We can show love and acceptance to one another – and to ourselves – even if the result falls short of an “A.” Christ’s death and resurrection made us perfect in His sight. We never have to question our worth.

“A” is for Acceptance by God based on His love for us, not our performance for Him or others.

“But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7)