Christians should be careful about being people pleasers

Christians should be careful about being people pleasers. Really? Aren’t we supposed to be loving? Do things like meet people where they are? Accept everyone for who they are? Get along with everyone? All that good stuff? Well, let me answer that with a question. Was Jesus a people pleaser?

Uh, no, Jesus was not out to please people. Here’s one example.

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People pleasers are liked, but Christians aren’t always liked.

This one was rather timely for me. Sometimes I wonder, how many people read the stuff I write? I mean, really read it and get anything from it. For years, I never enabled the “like” buttons. But sometimes, I do. I don’t get a lot of comments – good or bad. Even though lots of people start to read things, it’s impossible to know how many finish. Or how many got the point.

So I wonder if more people would be likely to just click a button. Apparently not.

But then, I think about something like the following:

In this age of Social Media, it’s so easy to get caught up in gaining others’ “likes” and “shares,” and dwell too much on being accepted rather than speaking God’s truth.

If our goals are to be popular and well-liked, maybe we need to consider the following promise:

“If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. This is why the world hates you.” (John 15:19)

That one verse says a lot. If my goal is to see how many people “like” what I write, that’s not necessarily a good thing. I know, some people just click the like button, without even reading it. Others will click it, even if they don’t get the message I was trying to portray. They might be liking something completely opposite of what I thought I was writing.

As I said earlier, I’d wonder how many people got the point I’m trying to make. How effective is what I’m doing? But then I remember, that’s not the goal. After all, it’s not between me and you, the reader. It’s between you and God. By the time you read this, I might have removed the like button again.

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And there it is: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

If we’re out to please God, which should be in the heart of every Christian, then some people will like us and some will hate us. But in reality, some will like us because they love Jesus – and others will hate us because they hate Jesus.

If we’re out to please people, without consideration for God, then people will either like us or hate us. It won’t be God that they love or hate. It will just be us.

So I recognize, some people will like what I write. Some will hate it. Everyone else won’t care one way or another. But it’s not about me.

It’s about you, the reader, and God. I’m just trying to be a messenger To get you to think. Not for me or about me. But for and about you and God.