Who are you trying to please in this life? It’s an important question. Everyone lives to please someone. Some live to please themselves, others a spouse or family member, while others the world. But who are you trying to please? This question presses into the heart of the motivation for everything you do. The person or thing you live to please is ultimately your God. If you live for the opinion of man, it is because man is your idol.¹

Paul would write to slaves and tell them to obey their masters “not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.”² If the whole world gives you their approval and you have the greatest success in the world, and yet you have not lived for the approval of God, you have missed the mark. Why? Because you have been created and are now redeemed to live for the approval of one.

This might seem to be a terrifying concept. For many of us it might instill in us terror that we will miss the mark. It could create in us a pursuit of self-righteousness which would simply clothe us in filthy rags.³ If that’s the conclusion you draw, you have missed the point. Living to please God comes from the discovery that the same God has provided you with the righteousness of Christ and thus approves of you and desires you to live for him.⁴

Living for the approval of one is the most liberating concept you can discover. It is an epiphany that sets you free like a bird from all the cumbersome opinions of man. As long as you are wrapped up in what man thinks of you, you will second-guess everything you do. You will have to carefully weigh upon the scales of man how people will perceive every action you take and every word you say. Your entire life will be lived like an archer shooting at a target that never stops moving. The opinions of man change like the wind, and so your efforts will be a striving after the wind. However, when your eye is fixed upon the Lord who has declared what is good and right, you will have the confidence to know that your way is approved.

It is the pursuit of the approval of God that enables Paul to say, “It is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.”⁵ It is this same spirit and attitude that enables the early disciples to declare, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”⁶ And “We must obey God rather than men.”⁷

So let me ask you again, who are you living to please? Let me encourage you to sit down today and consider what undergirds the action you are about to take. Will you do it for God’s pleasure or the pleasure of another?

1. Matthew 6:21 ↩︎
2. Ephesians 6:6-8 ↩︎
3. Isaiah 64:6 ↩︎
4. Romans 14:4 ↩︎
5. 1 Corinthians 4:2-4 ↩︎
6. Acts 4:19-20 ↩︎
7. Acts 5:29 ↩︎