Pleasing God over Pleasing Humans

“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates,

“‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;

    we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.” (Matthew 11:16-19 ESV)

This brings to mind some experiences from my own life with the regard to the subject of pleasing other people and trying to be the people others want us to be versus us living our lives to please the Lord even if other humans disapprove of us. 

In the late 1970s and early 1980’s my husband and I and our children were part of a church gathering that we liked, and all seemed to be going well for a while. Halfway through our time there we felt the call of God to move and to go someplace else to minister, and that went well for a while, too, but then we faced some difficulties, and without going into all the details, we ended up moving back to where we had been and we returned to the same church gathering.

Now during our year that we were gone, because of the trials that the Lord was taking me through, I was really growing in my walk of faith with the Lord, and he was teaching me so much through his word, and I was serious about serving him with my life. And then our pastor taught on Spiritual gifts, and he had us all submit to him what we believed our gifts were and where we believed God was calling us to ministry, and then the pastor (maybe the pastor and the elders) were to contact us and place us in ministry.

A whole year may have passed with no word from the pastor, and I knew the Lord wanted me to use the gifts he had given to me to minister to the body of Christ, so I called for the pastor to come to our home so that I could ask him about it. He listened to me, and then he started charging me with things I did not do. And then he said, “Would you say you have been crucified with Christ?” I answered, “Yes.” And he said, “I would say you haven’t!” Wow! And the man didn’t even know me and I don’t think we had talked before.

Well, I was very discouraged and disheartened, and I thought this man had power over me that God could do nothing about, and so I just escaped, i.e. I ran away from it all in my mind. And then one day I was reading the story of Jonah to my children and the Lord clearly spoke to me that I was running away, too, and that I needed to get back in there and fight this thing through. My response? I said, “But God, you don’t understand!” I really believed that. But I listened to him and I ended up speaking with some of the elders of the church on this matter.

Well, they also began accusing me of things I did not do because, as it turned out, they were judging me by themselves. They thought that I must be wanting to serve the Lord so that I could be seen by men, because that is why they would want to serve the Lord. And so they quoted a Scripture passage to me and told me to read it and that I would see what they were talking about. And I did what they said, but I did not see what they were talking about, because that wasn’t me they were talking about, but themselves. For I wanted to serve the Lord because I love Jesus.

Anyway, one of the things they said to me was that I came across too much like I have it all together. Well, in the process of this whole thing the Lord did deliver me from a spirit of fear and he did begin a healing process in my heart and life with regard to the pain and suffering and abuse that I had faced at the hands of my earthly father. For I had stuffed all that pain inside, for I had been told to just forget it, and I thought that is what I did, but it wasn’t really gone, just stuffed inside. So now I was in a healing process.

And then the Lord moved us somewhere else, and at that new local church fellowship I was accused of not having it all together because now I was going through this healing process. And what I learned from this has to do with this passage of Scripture. We are always going to have people who don’t like us and who will accuse us falsely of things we did not do, sometimes because they are judging us by themselves. And one group might want us to be one way while another will want the opposite.

For they are just rendering their earthly and worldly opinions of who they think we should or should not be based upon their own criteria, and not on the criteria of the word of God. And so we can drive ourselves crazy if we try to please them all, because one group will like us and another won’t, and we will be accepted one place (or not) and then rejected at another location, although we are still the same person. For other people will have their ideas of what we should be like that may be contrary to God’s will for our lives.

But if we do not conform to the culture, even the “Christian” culture of a particular area, we may be rejected and falsely accused of what we did not do just because we are different, because we are not people pleasers but we are God pleasers. And today the “Christian” culture is leaning much in the way of the world and of pleasing humans instead of pleasing God, so if we are God pleasers above being pleasers of man, we may find that we are rejected and not accepted because we don’t fit with that culture.

But as followers of Christ our goal should be to please the Lord above all else even if other humans don’t approve of us, and even if one group likes us one way while another similar group prefers us to be the opposite. For we are not here to please humans but to please God. We are to please other humans only to the extent that it does not compromise our pleasing of God with our lives. For it is not human approval we should be seeking, but the approval of God. So we should not fear the disapproval of other humans.

[Matt 5:10-12; Matt 10:16-25; Matt 24:9-14; Lu 6:22-23; Lu 21:12-19; Jn 15:1-21; Jn 16:33; Jn 17:14; Ac 14:22; Rom 5:3-5; Phil 3:7-11; 1 Pet 1:6-7; 1 Pet 4:12-17; 2 Tim 3:12; 1 Thess 3:1-5; Jas 1:2-4; 2 Co 1:3-11; Heb 12:3-12; 1 Jn 3:13; Rev 6:9-11; Rev 7:9-17; Rev 11:1-3; Rev 12:17; Rev 13:1-18; Rev 14:1-13]

Why Are You Afraid?  

An Original Work / December 5, 2013

Based off Various Scriptures

Do not be afraid. 

Your Lord is always by your side.

Serve the Lord in righteousness

Before Him all your days.

Those who hate the light

Will not come to the Lord.

They fear their deeds

Might be noticed.

So, they hate the light,

And they embrace the night.

Do not be afraid,

Although your enemy attacks.

Dare to share your testimony

Of God’s saving grace.

Do not fear their threats,

But honor Christ, your Lord.

Be prepared to give an answer

For the hope you have,

With gentleness; respect.

Why are you afraid?

For all that’s hidden will be shown.

What I tell you, speak in daylight.

Let the truth be known.

Do not be afraid

Of those who’ll take your life.

Fear the Lord with understanding.

Trust Him with your life,

And give not up to strife.

Do not be afraid.

Take courage, it is I, your Lord.

Bow before Me; now adore Me.

Oh, why do you doubt?

Listen to the Lord.

Get up and bear His name!

Run and tell the world He loves them.

Jesus came to save.

Give Him your all today. 

https://vimeo.com/114668071