Please God, Not People
Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Galatians 1:10
Our goal is to always please God and not compromise the Truth to please people. If we go against God’s Word to please people, we are trying to share the throne with God. You shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3) Having other gods before the true and only God is breaking the first commandment. We sometimes give priority to self instead of giving priority to God, and it will typically go unnoticed based on our choices.
The opening verse says that if our focus is own winning the approval of people, then we are not the Lord’s servant. The purpose of our Christian life is to serve the Lord by being a Light to the world. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16 NASB)
He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) We are called to love God more than anyone and anything on the planet. Then, His love fills our hearts to reflect to our neighbors. When this verse becomes true in our hearts, it will drive us to be pleasing to God. We will seek for men to be pleased by God, not pleased by us.
Pleasing men is a difficult if not impossible in many cases and the reward is nothing as compared to the reward for pleasing God. Jesus gave them this answer: Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. (John 5:19) Jesus lived to please the Father, even taking our sins to the cross; and, we are to have the mind and heart of Jesus. Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. (1 John 2:6) We live to please Christ.
Today, seek to please Christ in everything you do, and see yourself as doing everything for Christ. When we do everything for Christ, we become more like Jesus. Remember today Christ is with you and will guide you to be pleasing to Him, just as Jesus was pleasing to the Father.
Prayer: Lord, I pray that every thought and action will be pleasing to you today. Have the Spirit convict me when my thoughts and actions are leading me in the wrong direction. In Jesus’ name, Amen