Tag Archive | people pleaser

Look At Me

Dec14

Galatians 1:10 – For am I now trying to win the favor of people, or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ. (HCSB)

My husband began to pastor his first church when our son was just a few months old. I had a Bible, a covered casserole dish and determination to be the best Baptist preacher’s wife ever and therefore took on the title in full confidence. I was unaware a lack of piano skills trumped covered casserole dish and quite possibly Bible. One particular female member was abundantly gifted with keen sight for my shortcomings. Apparently Mark 16:15 (And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation) was her life verse, but she stopped reading after the word “proclaim”. Thankfully, her proclamations only extended into her local world. Pointing out my many lapses and disappointments was her cross to bear and she bore it gladly. As If her actions didn’t make me frenzied enough, her favorite beginning to any conversation with me was, “Well, the LAST preacher’s wife” and I would be made aware of the paragon of sainthood who had preciously occupied my seat. James 1:2-4 says to consider it an opportunity for great joy when troubles come your way, but joy is pushed away when we are working to fit someone else’s measurement. Church became stressful torture for me trying to keep our son quiet – no worship, lots of worry. Serving became a burden and a chore – not pleasing to God or me and definitely not pleasing to my strict supervisor. My focus was shifting to pleasing someone other than God and my peace was disappearing like dandelion dust. I wish I could say I have repented of my people pleasing ways, but when my focus begins to shift I remember the words to the old hymn “Turn your eyes upon Jesus and the things of earth will grow strangely dim”. Jesus said, “And the one who sees Me sees Him who sent Me.” (John 12:45 HCSB). I will change my way of looking at things by changing the things I’m looking at.

 

Go Out

Jan28

Genesis 12:1 – The Lord said to Abram: Go out from your land, your relatives and your father’s house to the land that I will show you (HCSB)

When my husband and I were newlyweds, we were living in the area where we had both grown up and had every intention of staying there the rest of our lives. Then God called my husband into the ministry, and we went out from our land, our relatives, and our parents’ houses to the land that God promised to show us. After several years of pastoring churches, God called my husband into full time evangelism. At that time we lived in a parsonage nowhere near our birth families, but the community felt like home and we had friends and neighbors that were closer than family. My husband’s new calling would take him away from home days and weeks at a time, sometimes to other countries, leaving me home with a pre-teen son. We couldn’t stay in the parsonage and felt that it would be easier on the new pastor if we disassociated ourselves from the church, so we again left our land, our relatives, and our Father’s House to go to an unknown land. That’s what I have always thought Genesis 12:1 was talking about – physically packing up and moving away, going from a known place to a place of the unknown. In recent weeks I have come to see another meaning in Genesis 12:1. I have come to believe that saying “yes” to God often can mean saying “no” to people. I have come to believe that Genesis 12:1 can also mean leaving the comfortable place of always being the “yes, I can do that” person to the uncomfortable place of occasionally being the “no, I can’t do that” person. I am a people pleaser. I want people to like me. I want to be known as the dependable one. I want people to see my faith be alive through my works. But, all of that can get me to the point where my people pleasing overshadows my God pleasing, where a person’s approval is more of a priority than God’s approval, where being dependable can lead to being drained. Like the writer of Psalm 139:23-24, Lord, I am begging You to make me aware of those things in my life that offend You, times when a call from a friend may not be a call from You, times when it’s a “good thing” but not a “God thing”. Help me to be able to distinguish between the work that You have called me to do and the work that others think I should be doing. Give me the strength to accept my limitations. Help me to lay down the burden that my busyness has become and rest quietly at the feet of the Almighty God who calls me to come to Him.