People Pleasing

I always thought I knew myself really well.  After all, I have been living with myself my whole life. However, as God illuminates things in my life I realized that I only know who I am in my flesh. I really don’t know myself as the person God desires for me to be.  He desires to transform my nature to match my identity.

In transforming me into who he has called me to be he slowly cuts off the things that are not like him.      I love that his correction is always gentle and never condemning. I believe he searches out all the problems and issues of our heart that we didn’t know existed, and then brings them to light so that we don’t have to be in bondage to them anymore. You cannot solve a problem that you don’t know exists. Recently God showed me that I have a problem with trying to please people.  Honestly, that really shocked me because I think when you know me personally a lot of people probably would not describe me as that. However, the bible says that man looks at the outward appearance but God looks at our heart. God notices my internal struggle with decision making because he knows that inwardly I do care (to some degree) about what people think.

I first noticed it when I started trying to change the way I was making decisions. For example, When God instructs me to let go of certain relationships with people (usually because they are not going where I am going), I have continued on in that relationship because I don’t want to be rude or hurt that person’s feelings. I have also had people ask me to go places that I know are not beneficial to my growth or christian walk and I don’t want to disappoint so I go.  People pleasing leads to compromise.  Every time we think “I’ll just go for a little”, or,  “it is just this once”, we are compromising the standard that Jesus has set for us.  In order to rise to the standard that God has called us to we will have to leave the opinions of people behind. You cannot be a new person and do the old things. You must learn to let some things go. Pleasing God is sure to disappoint people and pleasing people may cause you to disappoint God. Galatians 1: 10 states, “Am I now trying win the approval of human beings or God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Being a servant of Christ will require you to set everything aside (including what people think) and be wholly devoted to God.

My nature is to try to please those people whose opinion matters to me and sometimes that is ok, if it pleases God. However, pleasing God must be my priority, because that is my identity. God created me for his purposes not for my own or anybody else's.  People pleasing will lead you down a path of sin and you will face the consequences.  People are never satisfied and you can’t please everybody all the time. You will be the person who ends up disappointed. Focus on pleasing the only one whose opinion really matters.