people pleasing

I just wrote a post over on Peculiar about the need, as a Christian, to live life for the purpose of pleasing God only--of being so focused on loving Him that it doesn't matter if people get what you do or totally misconstrue it. I remember being absolutely shaken a few years' back when I read the Gospel of Luke and saw how clearly Jesus set Himself up to be misunderstood--He had to, because He had to follow God even though He knew everyone would see Him as some crazy blasphemer for doing it.

But He was right, after all.

It shook me so badly because I'm a natural people-pleaser. Of all things in life, I hate being misunderstood. Conflict makes me sick, even friendly conflict. And I realized, as I read, that as a follower of Jesus I couldn't just go on living my life to make people like me.

God has spent the last few years toughening me up in this respect. Oh, I still hate it when people misunderstand me! But by His grace, I am learning to focus more on pleasing my Saviour than on making sure His people approve of me. As a writer who has more of a platform now than I did when I first quaked in my boots at those accounts in Luke, I'm realizing the wisdom of God in putting me through some of these situations. I will write, doing my best to write things that are true, pure, and lovely--and some people won't get it. Some people will not like what I have to say or how I say it.

And I can't write for those people.

As a Christian, as someone who has been saved by grace and captured by the love of God, I must write to please Him and Him only. If I do that, He will use my words somewhere, to help someone, to encourage His people in some way. But that can't be the primary goal, or any effectiveness I might have had will drown in a sea of people-pleasing.

That's my lesson for today. Thanks for listening :).