Who's Approval Are You Living For?

August 16, 2023

You can’t please everyone. It’s one of the great truths of life.

If you please group A, group B will be upset at you. And if you please group B, you’ll upset group A.

Even God can’t please everyone. Think of all the sporting events

where people on both sides pray for a win. Only one team can win the

game. One person prays for rain. Another prays for sun. Only one gets

their prayer answered.

If even God can’t please everyone, it would be illogical for us to think that we could please everyone.

Everyone’s approval can’t matter to us if we want to have peace… why? Because that’s stressful. Like we just established, pleasing everyone is an impossible task.

So, who do we aim to please? Whose approval are we to live for? Whose opinion should concern us?

Living for the approval of God is the only way to feel at peace.

Living for the approval of people is a good way to get stressed out.

We all need to ask ourselves this question from Galatians 1:10:

“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.”

Jesus reminds us in Luke 16:13, “No one can serve two masters” (NLT). You can’t live for the approval of others and live for God’s approval at the same time. You have to decide how you are going to live your life.

Jesus leads by example. He showed us this in John 5:30 when he said: “I am not trying to do what I want, but only what [my Father] who sent me wants” (GNT).

Jesus wasn’t trying to win a popularity contest. He lived for an

audience of one. He had a simple life in many ways. He just did what God

put him on Earth to do. Jesus never let approval or rejection of others

control him.

Whose approval are you living for?