Satan is a skilled deceiver.
He makes us aspire to things that we should not aspire to.
He makes us seek after things that we shouldn’t seek after.
He is sly enough to make us think that these are noble pursuits.
If we’re lucky, we wise up.
Well…forget the luck. This illumination of truth does not arrive by luck at all.
Oh no. It’s only through God’s speaking to us that we can come to realize that we’ve been fed lies by the enemy.
What leads me to write about this?
Well, I write because this is a journey I’ve been on all of my life but, most noticeably, during the last year or so…only I didn’t realize I was on the journey until yesterday.
What is it that I aspire to and seek after?
Approval.
More specifically, I desire the approval of others.
I think this comes from being the oldest child. Not only that, but my mom was single during much of my early childhood, which resulted in a lot of responsibility being placed on my young shoulders.
Growing up, I never felt like I measured up, so I kept trying.
Straight A’s…
Salutatorian…
Good grades in college…
Perfectionism in the jobs I held early in my marriage and later, when I returned to work after my children were in elementary and middle school…
Perfect grades when I returned to college as an adult…
Magna Cum Laude…
And then I hit a wall.
For some odd reason, I subconsciously selected a person that I needed to please, and I’ve been trying, ever since, to reach this person’s standards.
And I kept failing.
Which confused me.
I discovered that my perceptions of myself and this person’s perceptions of me were vastly different.
Which confused me further.
Yesterday, I asked myself a hard question:
Why do I keep trying to please this person?
In the middle of my confusion and after in-depth talks with a good friend and Super Sis, God revealed something to me.
I’ve been aspiring to please the wrong person.
I need to be working to please Him.
The Bible verse on my phone yesterday read:
Colossians 3:23-24
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
Too often, we seek to be people-pleasers when, in reality, we should seek to be God-pleasers.
People change at a whim, which leads to our confusion on how to please them.
God does not change.
He is the same yesterday and today. He will be the same tomorrow.
In the end, we will stand before Him at the judgment.
He will not ask us about what we did to please So-and-So.
He will ask what we did to serve Him.
Working to please others is confusing, exhausting, and depressing.
Working to serve the Lord is exhilarating and will one day result in rewards beyond what we could ever hope to receive here on this temporal earth.
Filed under: Christian | Tagged: Christianity | 2 Comments »
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