Faith and values: Only affirmation needed comes from God
The answer most certainly will shape the way you spend your time and emotional energy this year. It’ll shape the quality and genuineness of your relationships and influence your enjoyment of life.
To whom do you turn for affirmation?
If we get our sense of approval primarily from other people, we find ourselves adjusting behavior, priorities and opinions according to the whims of those people.
Look around you and see the evidence: People pleasing is a prison.
At its extremes, people pleasing tempts us to isolate, or live in duplicity, always insecure in our own skin.
People pleasing places us under the fickle control of what others think about us or, worse yet, what we imagine they think about us.
Sound familiar?
The Bible warns us against this crippling preoccupation: “Fearing people is a dangerous trap,” says Proverbs 29:25.
Happily, there is not only a bandage for people pleasers, but a cure. It is to find our security and worth not in others, or even ourselves, but in Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is a loud shout of God’s opinion of us. He loves us immeasurably, and sent his son to live a perfect life for us and die on the cross to pay the penalty for our imperfection.
God approves of us thoroughly and completely as we trust in what Jesus has done for us. Friends, there is no greater source of strength and confidence than to be approved by God himself.
What the Bible calls “fear of man” goes by other names: peer pressure, co-dependency, shame.
Whatever we call it, its symptoms are many: an inability to say no; overcommitment; an obsession with self-esteem; fear of revealing your true self; lack of confidence; depression; anger.
The fear of man is indeed a dangerous trap.
We get out of this trap by trusting in God and living the kind of life he approves.
The same proverbs that warn us away from the fear of man also warn us to fear God. In other words, we’re set free from people pleasing not by growing in love for ourselves, but growing in love and reverence for God.
The apostle Paul often was rejected by people for his belief in Jesus, ridiculed as a lunatic, and even imprisoned as an enemy of the state. Eventually, he was martyred for his life of trust in Jesus.
And yet Paul spoke confidently of the importance of living for God’s approval, not the approval of others.
“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved,” Paul wrote to his friend and fellow missionary, Timothy, “a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”
When we live as those approved of God, he’ll lead us to order our lives by the truth of his word – the Bible. As we rely on the truth of Scripture and obey its instructions, we’ll be living the kind of life God approves.
For Paul, there was great liberty in knowing God approved of his lifestyle and priorities, even as most people rejected him.
“For if I still pleased men,” said Paul to his friends in Galatia, “I would not be a bondservant of Christ.”
Did you catch that last part?
Christians cannot expect to trust in Jesus and order their lives by God’s truth and at the same time be approved by all people. It’s simply not possible.
We will either be enslaved to others, ourselves, or to Christ.
May God give us grace to choose Jesus.
Steve Massey is pastor of Hayden Bible Church (www.haydenbible.org). He can be reached at (208) 772-2511 or steve@haydenbible.org.