Friday, November 25, 2011

Pleasing God Is What Matters

Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy on us, for we have endured much contempt. We have endured much ridicule from the proud, much contempt from the arrogant. -- Psalm 123:3-4

Some days it seems as though I have spent a lifetime trying to please people who were never really worth the effort. I look back and wonder what in the world I was thinking. The only approval I ever really needed was God’s.

Isn’t that true of most of us? We want people to like us. We want people to love us. We want people to like spending time with us. That’s especially true of those closest to us. When they reject us, we feel that rejection deep inside and we try just about anything to change it.

But we can’t. We can only be who God has called us to be. And that’s enough. The voices that say it isn’t come from Satan. That’s hard to hear and even harder to accept. It’s like we’d rather pretend something is wrong with us than to look at our accusers and see and hear the voice of Satan.

I’m not trying to say that any of us are perfect. We’re not. Nor will we always get along. Everyone has disagreements. Everyone has selfish moments. Everyone sometimes lives down to what they’d rather not be.

But love shouldn’t be so hard. It shouldn’t hurt so badly. And it never seeks to destroy. That isn’t love and it isn’t from God. It’s taken me a lifetime to understand that.

Believing God is so freeing. It means that I don’t have to worry so much about what other people see or think when they look my way. I don’t have to try so hard to please people who, frankly, are never going to like me anyway. And I sure don’t have to keep getting kicked down by people who put me down in order to feel better about themselves.

I know. I have forgiven them. They are who and what they are. They didn’t choose me anymore than I chose them. Nor can they fix themselves. I pray daily that God will touch their hearts and they will finally be the people they claim to be. Some days I have hope. Other days I just don’t see the point.

Then the Holy Spirit reminds me that with God there is always hope. With God all things are possible. With God broken hearts and torn apart lives can be rebuilt and restored.

I pray that happens. I do. But I’m not going to try anymore to please anyone but God. He’s the only One who matters. I want to stay focused on His light and trust that He’ll handle all the rest.