You could be doing everything according to God’s plan - and carrying those things out with kindness, understanding, compassion and grace - but someone might still be irritated with you. It’s just impossible to please everyone!
To “please” means to oblige, satisfy or cater to the desires of others. In some cases, we could very well be the hand and voice of God when we strive to please others, but in other cases we could be the hand of the enemy as we cater to the strongholds and ungodly desires of other people. This can actually strengthen the enemy’s hold on them and make us ‘slaves’ to their whims. When it comes to our relationship with other people, pleasing and serving are not the same – one comes from the desires of man, the other from the heart of God.
More than making man happy and striving to have man befriend us and invite us into his inner circle, our first goal must be to please God. If pleasing or befriending man puts the Word or will of God in 2nd place, then we have lost our first love and become servants of man (Gal. 1:10). While loving others needs to be a top priority for us, love has to be defined by God, not the world. The world sees love as that which satisfies the flesh, while God’s love is self-sacrificing and purifies the heart and soul. God is the author of love and He Himself is the embodiment of love – but that doesn’t mean He is loved back - and neither will we necessarily be loved back as we become more and more Christ-like.
We are here as God’s ambassadors – sent to carry out His work and will in His stead. An ambassador must keep his allegiances to the country from which he was sent – that’s where his authority comes from and that’s his home base. If he shifts his affections from his country to the people around him, he will not be able to carry out his assignment for trying to keep people happy. But if he keeps his affections on the One who sent him, he will keep his authority intact, do a greater service for the people he’s sent to, and have a powerful backing from his homeland.
If our motives are pure and we seek first to lovingly carry out the will of God, we can rest assured that others will not be happy with us – it’s that simple. But if our affections shift to pleasing others for our comfort, then we may very well find ourselves out of God’s will. As difficult as it is, we have to come to the understanding that not everyone will like us or say ‘nice’ things about us. Beyond examining ourselves, living in love and grace, and apologizing when we’ve erred, perhaps the best thing to do in these circumstances is to shake off the dust and keep our eyes focused on God.
No comments:
Post a Comment