DAILY DEVOTIONAL – September 20, 2019
“Aiming to Please”
Prayer: Our God and Father, guard our hearts against vanity and selfishness. Keep us ever focused on living a life that pleases You alone, for You are our only happiness and worth. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 2:4-6
4 For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts. 5 Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you well know. And God is our witness that we were not pretending to be your friends just to get your money! 6 As for human praise, we have never sought it from you or anyone else.
Devotion – “Aiming to Please”
Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter have been in the news a lot lately. Regardless of your own personal viewpoints on privacy and online information regulations, I think one thing has been made vividly clear just by the fact that these companies are standing in front of and testifying before Congress: our world and culture and society are changing so quickly, we can hardly keep up with the implications and consequences of that change.
Not only Facebook and Twitter, but Instagram, SnapChat, YouTube, Google+, Weibo, Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Kik, GroupMe and many more. We live in a time where technology has put us on display at all times. It’s hard to believe, but it was only 14 years ago that Facebook was first launched by a bunch of college students. In that 14 years, Facebook went from a dorm room idea to redefining how we communicate and socially interact with each other around the world. How do social media companies like Facebook and Twitter get to be so massive and all encompassing? What did the founders of these companies see and understand about the nature of people that enabled them to create a social media product that so many just can’t seem to live without? Certainly they understood that people want to stay in touch with family and friends and use technology to save and create memories. Unfortunately however, I think the real truth about human nature that companies like Facebook have capitalized on, is our vanity, our tendency to be concerned about appearances, our desire to want to be admired by others, and the fact that at the end of the day we really do care what others think about us and that fact that we want to be accepted and approved by society and culture.
Now, there are certainly many healthy reasons to care about what other people think and to want to please people and be accepted and approved by people. The Bible says in Proverbs 22, “Choose a good reputation over great riches; being held in high esteem is better than silver or gold.” And when the Apostle Paul talks about the requirements of a church leader in 1 Timothy, being of a good reputation is one of them. However, I think we all know that it is too easy to live our lives trying to please others and be approved and accepted by people in an unhealthy way.
I think if we are all honest with ourselves and each other, in varying degrees we all are guilty of putting to high of a value on pleasing others and measuring our own worth or success from popular opinion. Whether or not it be a loved one, a friend, an employer, a colleague or anyone else that holds an influence we would like to benefit from, there are times we make the mistake of believing that our happiness is wrapped up in other people. Of course, there can be benefits of living for the approval of others. Getting buddy-buddy with the boss or soliciting the approval of those with the power to provide the things we desire could very well result in certain benefits. However, whatever we may prosper from vain attempts to please others will never make us happy or satisfy the much deeper longing and need for approval that every human heart has; especially when we compromise our values or convictions or try and make right what we know is wrong.
It is true that every human heart longs to be accepted and deeply desires to be approved of, but the fickle and selfish opinions of sinful men will never provide the assurance of acceptance we long for, because what every heart ultimately longs for is the acceptance and approval of our God and Creator. We know in our hearts and conscience that we have all gone very far down the wrong path in our sin and rebellion against God, and having been made by God to enjoy a relationship with Him, we will never feel pleased with ourselves or with others until we are first reconciled to God and know that He is pleased with us and smiles upon us.
If left to our own merits and our own worthiness, receiving God’s approval and blessing would be an eternal impossibility. But thanks be to God for Jesus! Jesus was the Son of God in the flesh who lived the perfect God-fearing and God-pleasing life we were intended for but have failed to do. At Jesus’ baptism and on the Mount of Transfiguration where Jesus revealed just a glimpse of His eternal glory to the disciples, on both occasions God the Father boomed His mighty and thunderous voice from heaven and declared “This is my Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” – Luke 9:35. Christ was perfectly faithful in His life toward God; faithful to the point of death on the cross where, just as the Father instructed, Jesus gave His life for ours; a perfectly faithful and God-pleasing life sacrificed in the place of sinners so that you and I could be forgiven freely by faith in Christ and know for certain by His resurrection from the dead on the third day that when God now looks upon us, He no longer sees our sin and brokenness, but instead sees the righteousness and worthiness of His Son in whose blood we have been covered by believing in Him. Because of Jesus, there is nothing left we have to do to please God and receive His grace and gift of eternal life. There is nothing left to do but receive His most gracious gift by putting our faith and trust and all of our value and self-esteem and worth in Christ alone.
As Paul says in our text from 1 Thessalonians for today, “Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts.” At the end of the day my friends, if we desire a good night’s sleep and a clear conscience, there is only One to whom we have to answer and only One we need to worry about pleasing. By faith in Jesus Christ and His life, death and resurrection on our behalf, we can know for certain that God smiles upon us and is pleased with us because He is pleased with His Son Jesus in whom we have our life and hope. When we refuse to compromise our faith and convictions and the truth of what God’s Word tells us is most important, living a life that longs to please God rather than men, we worship God and praise Him in the purest possible way – in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23-24).
The unfortunate irony of seeking the approval of others, is that when we live to please men, we do so only at the expense of our own pleasure and happiness. I love what Mother Theresa said about living in such a way that strives to please God alone, “People are often unreasonable, irrational and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish and ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”
I pray each of you lives in the confidence and assurance of God’s love for you because of Christ’ faithfulness to God and to us. God bless you all, and remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
