Urban dictionary (arguably one of my favorite dictionaries) states, "When a people-pleaser dies, they see the life of someone else flash before their eyes"
While that statement is extremely morbid, it’s also hilarious and I could absolutely see it being true for a people-pleaser. I can see how, in the end, having lived our entire lives in reference to other people, our life would look like a tribute to others that we played a small part in. Tragic huh? We’re not even the main character in our own life stories, we gave that role to everyone else. As Christian people, we know that our lives are not our own anyways but that’s not what we’re talking about here. People-pleasing is not a beautiful moment of surrender between us and God, it’s us surrendering the stage to anybody and everybody else besides God.
Did you know that people-pleasing is actually a sin?
No? Me neither.
And here I thought that was just my lovely personality shining through.
But no, People-pleasing is a form of idolatry and idolatry is a sin. Therefore, people-pleasing is a sin.
Is your mind blown yet? No?
Okay, challenge accepted.
In Galatians 1 :10 Paul gives us this incredible look into the nature of people-pleasing and how it functions in opposition to pleasing God. He says in his sassiest deadpan voice: “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” The direct comparison happening here is something we see often in scripture between two opposing forces vying for our attention. Like death and life, blessings and curses, the flesh and the spirit, doubt and faith, etc. Matthew 6:24 says “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
This specific verse in Matthew is comparing worship of God and worship of money (another idol) but the principle in the comparison of worship and attention is the same. You can’t have two masters, you can’t serve two gods, it’s one or the other. The first commandment God gives to Moses that we see in scripture is also, funnily enough, about idolatry, “You shall have no other gods before me” He continues, “Do not make an idol for yourself, whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. You must not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the fathers’ sin, to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commands.” (Exodus 20:3; 4-6) And just to clarify, the word “before” used in verse 3 is not used to indicate primary placement, like God is your main man but not the only one in your life— like He comes before everyone else but there are other idols and gods that come after. No, that word “before” means besides and except, “you shall have no other gods besides me”, meaning: He is it, the one and only God you serve and have allegiance to. He’s the only one on the throne of your heart. No secondary gods, no assistant to the regional manager gods, NO OTHER GODS EXCEPT HIM. (Gods At War, Kyle Idleman)
Idolatry is the first thing God addresses and commands against in the issuing of the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel who, literally, were building an idol with their bare hands in real time as God was writing that commandment down. Idolatry is something very serious to God, He demands our complete attention, our whole heart, mind, spirit, soul and body. Our past, our present, our future, all of it! He wants all of it. People-pleasing does not fit into that equation. Living our lives in reverence of other people, to make others happy and comfortable, to fall in line with their opinions and preferences concerning our looks, personality and behavior does not fall in line with God’s plan for us. AT ALL. I would go so far as to say, It is disobedient to live your life in efforts to please other people. It is rebellion to respect the opinions of others where it concerns your identity, over God’s opinion of you and His word where it concerns your identity in Him. It is sin to spend your time trying to please people when your life is solely meant to be for an audience of one, your sole purpose to please God.
Now, I’m not a people-pleaser in the traditional sense or in an obvious way. I can say “no” to people, I can set up boundaries in relationships, I choose my friends wisely and I’d rather confront things and clear the air than pretend like they didn’t happen (Most of the time). I can do things others disapprove of and I can disagree with people without a backwards glance but people-pleasing has a lot of dimensions. As much as I could live out my independence on the outside, on the inside I would question everything, doubt my every move, wonder what people thought and how they perceived me. I would push past those feelings a lot of the time and that’s where I think my people-pleasing behaviors differ from others but nonetheless, I would still find my heart caught up and tangled in the web of people-pleasing. I would overthink and over-analyze every situation and every conversation after the fact and usually end up blaming myself somehow someway for every perceived wrong and flaw.
It wasn’t until I started unraveling this thread that I realized how deeply ingrained living my life to please others had become. I mean, I brush my teeth and think about other people, how ridiculous is that! I literally sit there and wonder how other people brush their teeth. “I heard that you have to brush them for two minutes straight or it’s all for nothing” “Circular motions or back and forth, everybody does circular motions so..” “What will people think of me if I don’t brush my teeth correctly?” “What if they knew that I sometimes forget to brush them?” “Everybody has electric toothbrushes now, I need to get one, it works better.” and so on and so forth. I’m just now seeing that oftentimes my life has been a performance for the benefit of others. Even though I am obedient and I choose to honor God regardless of all that, I tend to consider other people before God. And the cherry on top of the people-pleasing sundae— while I’m being obedient to God I often worry about what others are thinking and how I am coming across. I still do what God asked me to do but I can easily turn my obedience into performance art for others. Easily.
If you called me a people-pleaser a couple of years ago I would have laughed in your face because I didn't think this was an area I struggled with. I've seen people-pleasers living their best agreeable lives, I've seen the damage it can do and in my brain, there was no way I could possibly be a people-pleaser when I purposely avoid it. But as it turns out, not only am I a people-pleaser, I’m a deeply complex case.
As I've been discovering this solemn news, I have also learned that people-pleasing is an area of my life the enemy loves to capitalize on, he likes to insert suggestions and further poison my mind away from who I should be focusing on at any given moment. Of course, I am the one who gives ear to those lies but he capitalizes on my desire to please others and uses it to confuse me and corrupt my purest intentions. The enemy will take something I want to do out of love for God and question it and criticize it until my heart starts turning away from God. Until it becomes worship of a totally different kind. Sometimes I think I’m doing something to honor God but I’m really trying to honor God in a way that pleases people. And I have noticed that my true god in those moments isn’t God, it’s people. I knocked God off the throne, I let the enemy persuade me to knock God off the throne in the same way he persuaded Eve to question God's instructions and intentions. So, it is important for us to realize that People-pleasing isn’t just a sin you commit, its not just idolatry, it’s not just a pattern of thinking you have, it’s also a weapon the enemy uses to corrupt your focus. Something he takes full advantage of in your relationship with God.
Now, being a people-pleaser doesn’t mean you’re hopeless or that you don’t love God. It’s just another area of sin in your life God wants to expose to the light and deal with so you can grow and become who He’s created you to be. Someone who doesn’t need anyone else’s approval, someone who walks with confidence in Christ, someone who knows their own worth and value because they stand on Gods truth about their identity. Someone who doesn’t settle for anything less than their heavenly father’s approval and perspective. Someone who doesn’t settle for anything less than the love He has shown them they are worthy of. Someone free and full of wonder and hope and beauty. Someone who belongs because they belong to Him, someone who is anxious for nothing because they know they have access to everything in Him. A true child of God, that walks like their father walks on water because He does.
That’s what God wants for me and that’s what He wants for all of us.
Discovering that I’m a people-pleaser wasn’t about shaming me or condemning me or anything like that, it was a gentle loving reminder that “Hey, I AM your God not them and trust me, you don’t want them to be.” God only disciplines and corrects those He loves and I am so grateful that He takes the time to love me in this way and help me change because I would hate to live my life serving the wrong person. I would hate to live my life being a performance artist for the benefit of others, I hate it now. People make terrible gods! All I find in living to please others is more fear and anxiety and insecurity and frustration. There is no validation or fulfillment, there is no life-giving coming from them just life-zapping, energy-stealing, spirit weakening slavery. And it’s not their fault that I put them on the throne, it’s not their fault that I made them my god, that’s my mistake and I am the one who has to make it right.
Unbecoming a people-pleaser is a difficult journey but something about Galatians 1:10 spoke to me and changed my entire perspective. When Paul makes that direct comparison between being a slave to people or a slave of Christ, there's more than just conviction in those words. There's an answer, a resolution. I've noticed over the past year that a lot of my methods to rid myself of people-pleasing patterns are focused on self-improvement. I have been focused on what I can do to better myself, how I need to change and let go of those mindsets and behaviors, my effort and my hard work. Which is overwhelming at times and sometimes makes ridding myself of this idolatry seem impossible. I struggle to understand what is selfish and what isn't, I struggle to understand how to honor God in my relationships with people without people-pleasing. But in the last part of verse 10, Paul says, "...if I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ." Focusing on pleasing people is what robs you of pleasing God, that's the Biblical principle in this direct comparison at play. In the same way, feeding your flesh robs your spirit and vice versa. So it stands to reason, focusing on God-pleasing and being a slave to Christ is what eliminates slavery to people and eliminates the power of people-pleasing in your life. The process of unbecoming a people-pleaser is not about you focusing on yourself and changing your behaviors, it is about refocusing on God.
That blew my mind because here I was, trying to figure out how I could change my mindset towards others and fix my heart only to find out the solution to the problem, the cure to my cancer was refocusing my mind and my heart on God. Which seems to be the solution to all of my problems really and probably a lot of yours.
The solution is always a deeper pursuit of God. I don't know why that takes so long to sink in, probably because its the sort of truth that would set a lot of people free from a lot of things but it's so simple we often overlook it. Maybe it takes so long to sink in because it never fully does. We get it, we need more God but do we really? Do we really understand how many of our issues and struggles would resolve with expediency if we took our pursuit of God to the next level? If we actually purposefully set out to breathe God in like He is our only source of rest and relaxation and comfort.
I don't know about you but it is so easy for me to get comfortable in my relationship with God. I do my devotion every morning, pat myself on the back and go about my day. I pray throughout the day like I'm having a continuous flowing conversation with God. Pat on the back. It's so easy to celebrate the little things we do because we know God loves those moments with us and that the little moments matter but there has to be more to it than that. God wants to be the love of our lives, THE love of our lives. Spending five minutes with the love of your life in the morning every morning is a great start but that can't be all there is. Texting them throughout the day is great too but what about a date? What about sitting together over a meal and talking about your days? What about cuddling up together and just having an intimate moment? What about actual closeness? Is the love of your life your Facebook friend or your soul's respite? Are we long distance living in the same house or what? God wants to be involved with you, He wants to be apart of everything you do or don't do and I don't know why it's so much work for us to involve Him because it shouldn't be.
Scratch that, I know why.
I know why it's easier for us to generously love a human than to generously love God because the enemy knows where the real power is and there's no way he's not going to put a battlefield in front of the thing that could change and save your life.
Why would it be easy to get to the one who could break all your chains with one word of love? Why make it easy for you to experience unconditional love and confirmation and encouragement? Why would he make it easy when it's going to cost him all the hard work he did throughout the week getting you to believe all the lies he sold you on Instagram and TV? Loving God isn't easy, it should be but it isn't. Because loving God and living your life to please and honor Him is the cure to everything that ails you and because if your enemy can give you distraction and escape and label it peace, if he can give you fantasies and label them dreams, if he can give you insecurities and call it identity, if he can turn emotional and mental exhaustion into "rest" than you'll never know that there's something else out there. You'll never go looking for true peace and rest because the toxic cheap version is all you've ever known. You don't even know that rest is refreshing; you don't even know that you don't have to be asleep to be at rest because rest is not actually an absence of conscious thought, it is a peace of mind you've yet to experience and this true rest is what God offers. But when all we know of rest is mental and emotional exhaustion, when God says "come rest in me" we feel anxious and we prepare ourselves for bombardment; we come to God with reservations and with the mentality of "I'm tired so please don't overwhelm me right now". When God says words like "consuming" and "everything" we automatically feel exhausted because we hear "effort". Even when God says "surrender" we hear "work" because that's the only surrender we've known. That's why it's hard to love God in action sometimes , that's why it's hard to reach for Him in our busyness, that's why it's so much easier for us to reach for people because we know how to deal with them and we can't imagine God's all consuming nature as anything more than too much. "It's too much for me right now" "another correction?" "I love you but I'm so busy with so much right now, I can't". If we truly experienced God's version of the cheap stuff we've been sold, peace, rest, love, grace and encouragement it wouldn't be hard to reach for Him because He would be the only thing that makes sense and the only thing breathing life into us. The truth is, everything around us wants to take something (energy, time, etc.) and rarely does it give anything back but God wants to give us everything, that's the principle He works with. He gives! And even though it will cost us some energy and some time what we get in return is a thousand times richer than anything we could possibly experience throughout the rest of our day.
(I'm sorry, I went on a little Holy Ghost rant there. Let's circle back to the point)
People-pleasing is just another way to get you off track and focused on the wrong things. It's just another form of empty worship that consumes you and takes from you, giving little to nothing in return. Your life is not a performance for public consumption, your life is a real relationship with God and it has nothing to do with anybody else but you and Him.
“If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
It’s one or the other my friend. You have to choose. Will you continue to live your life trying to please people or trying to please God? Who owns your heart? Who is worthy of your worship? The people of this world, their trends, their opinions and their preferences for how you should look, be and behave? Or the God of the universe who loves you and knows you better than you know yourself, who equips you to rise to your potential and gives you purpose, feeds your passions and has good and perfect plans for you? Who is the better God? Who will you choose today?
Galatians 1:6-10
"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ."
Gods At War by Kyle Idleman
(great perspective on idolatry if you're looking for a resource to help you walk this journey)
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