Daily Devotional: Friday, July 30

Speaker: Ben Sigman

Theme: Hiding

Daily Devotional: Tuesday, July 27

Speaker: Ben Sigman

Theme: Hiding

Daily Devotional: Friday, July 16

Speaker: Ben Sigman

Theme: Pleasing Everyone

Read: Matthew 6:33, Romans 14:17-18, Proverbs 3:3-4

Think: Prioritizing our focus is the key to personal success. Take for instance your profession. You may have many ideas to improve yourself and work productivity, but unless you prioritize the ideas and focus on one of them at a time, none of them will come into reality.

Similarly, we can prioritize our worship. Romans 14:17-18 says, “The important things are living right with God, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Anyone who serves Christ by living this way is pleasing to God and will be accepted by other people.” The writer here prioritizes the object of our worship as God first. As we focus on pleasing God first, then our peaceable, joyful and Christ-centered behavior follows. A natural consequence of this behavior is being accepted by other people- but pleasing people is not the goal.

That on which we focus, will increase. When we focus on pleasing God with our worship, thoughts and behaviors, God becomes bigger in our life. Our understanding of God, our ability to love and be faithful increases. But if we focus on the expectations of other people, those expectations grow in importance- to a bottomless pit of expectations that can never be fulfilled.

As we focus on the things that God wants for us, we will find that this takes faith and trust. It may be a bit uncomfortable and even scary at times, but God is good and trustworthy and able to supply all your needs. Stick with pleasing God first, and let Him take care of other people’s expectations. This is what Jesus was talking about when He said, “Seek first God’s kingdom and what God wants. Then all your other needs will be met as well.” (Matthew 6:33)

Do: Take some time to see how God wants to grow you in faith and trust by pleasing Him first. Write down some expectations that you feel from other people that are contrary to God’s ways for you, and surrender those things to Him in prayer.

Pray: God, help me to seek your kingdom first, surrendering my needs and wants to you so you can fulfill them in your perfect love.

Daily Devotional: Wednesday, July 14

Speaker: Ben Sigman

Theme: Pleasing Everyone

Read: Proverbs 19:19, Proverbs 19:3

Think:  Have you ever tried to make an angry person happy? You may have found out that it is an impossible task. The harder you try, the angrier the person gets. Some of us may have learned this the hard way.

I have an especially hard-to-please family member on my husband’s side (I have a few on my own side, but will save that talk for another devotion). The harder I tried to make her happy, the meaner she got. I prepared the things she liked to eat, the shows she liked to watch, and the games she liked to play. At the end of her visits, I felt tired and happy she was gone. I was definitely working harder at making her happy, than she was herself. How did her happiness become my job, anyway?

Proverbs 19:19 says, “Hot-tempered people must pay the penalty. If you rescue them once, you will have to do it again.” This rescuing business is very peculiar- why would we even want to rescue an angry person? Why do we think we should rescue an angry person? Probably because it makes us feel a little more powerful, a little bit more in control, even a bit special when we can subdue, soothe, or please a hot-tempered person from his/her own rage. But being that angry person’s pacifier only keeps him/her an emotional baby. We keep the person from experiencing his/her own consequences that could turn him/her to Christ.

When we decide to step back from rescuing or soothing an angry person, we allow that person the room they need to grow. We feel uncomfortable and powerless when we don’t please or save them, but we can take that discomfort and powerlessness to God and ask Him to help us. If we get out of the way, God can really show up and transform that angry person into a growing person.

And guess what? I changed my tactics with my especially-hard-to-please-family-member. Instead of making her happiness my goal, I made pleasing God my goal, which was not altogether as impossible as the other! Both she and I did a little growing up in the process, too. Our relationship is better for it.

Do: Acknowledge one thing that you will step back from. Actively turn to God with trust and surrender.

Pray: God, help me to recognize when I step in and try to rescue someone from the consequences of their own behavior. Help me to turn to You for comfort instead of over-functioning for someone else. Help me to always direct the people around me to You. 

Daily Devotional: Tuesday, July 13

Speaker: Ben Sigman

Theme: Pleasing Everyone

Read: 1 John 5:21, John 12:42-43

Think:  Have you ever visited Pompeii in Italy? Or any other ruins of ancient culture? I did a few years back and noticed Pompeii’s many temples, shrines, and pedestals dedicated to the worship of idols.  Each place of worship had an altar near it, where some animal would be killed and offered for the god’s appeasement and pleasure. In some ancient cultures, women would offer their virginity, and mothers would offer their children in sacrifice to please the gods.

 Just like back then, we offer sacrifices to others to make them happy with us. We think that we will finally achieve significance if others have an untarnished view of who we are. Sometimes we might even work really hard at making other people happy, even at the expense of hurting ourselves and the people closest to us.

Jesus was really good at not worshipping the god of people pleasing. As a recovering people pleaser, I learn a lot from the bible’s examples of how Jesus related to others. Here’s a few examples I’d like to share:

• Jesus resisted Satan’s temptations to become a popular ruler (Matthew  4:4-10)
• Jesus resisted being influenced by his mother and brothers when they wanted Him to do something He didn’t come to do. (Matthew 12:46-50)
• Jesus stood up for the woman with the perfume and the woman caught in adultery much to the religious leaders’ public displeasure. (Mark 14:6-8)
• Jesus endured his own brothers’ unbelief, and resisted doing what they said to gain public popularity. (John 7:1-9)

Jesus never gave in to gain the good opinion of other people. I want to be like that too. I want my core convictions of life, love, grace and goodness to never be compromised to make someone else happy. Making other people pleased with me is just not worth giving up the most important part of myself- my soul. I want to deal with myself, and with other people with the kind of truth and grace Jesus had.

Do: Think of one way you will seek God’s pleasure and good opinion today instead of seeking to please mankind.

Pray: Jesus, You were really good at resisting the temptation to gain the approval of man over the approval of God. Please teach me, day by day to resist this temptation too. Help me to be so overcome with the love of the Father, that I only seek His approval and pleasure. 

Daily Devotional: Monday, July 12

Speaker: Ben Sigman

Theme: Pleasing Everyone

Read: Proverbs 29:25, James 4:8

Think: Bill Cosby once said, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” I have often thought of pleasing people as trying to hit a moving target. But not like the clay pigeon kind of target where you can pretty much predict where and when the thing is coming. People pleasing is more like trying to hit a flock of crazed pigeons flying every which way. You may get one or two, but when you’re trying for all of them, you’ll miss more than you hit.

Proverbs 29:25 says, “The fear of man is a snare, but the one who trusts in the Lord is protected.” People like to be liked. People are afraid of being disliked or being disrespected. This is what the writer of  Proverbs is referring to. Often times, when trying to gain the approval of someone else, we do things to get them to like us. We may even end up doing or saying things that aren’t representative of who we really are.  This is what the bible refers to as being “double minded” or duplicitous. We end up being a lesser version of ourselves, watered down by others’ expectations in order not to be distasteful to anyone, and missing the mark of pleasing the Only One who matters- God.

  Oh, and by the way, I really want you to like this devotion, and hope that you think that I am a wonderful writer and Christian. Oh, and I hope I don’t offend you, bore you, or give you the wrong idea. I hope this devotional is pleasing to you because, darn it, I really want you to like me.

Oh shoot, I’ve done it again. What I mean to say is, “God, I want this devotion to please You and to accomplish what You want it to accomplish. I am glad for the gifts You’ve given me, and I am really glad I get to use them to make a difference in the world. Now I give this little scrap of writing to you as a means of worship and ask that You bless it. Thank You.”

Whew, I’m glad I got that taken care of! The truth is, when I seek to please the Father, I hit my mark every time. Not because I’m a really good shot, but because He’s made the target so attainable. The relationship is the target. Just coming to Him, surrendering to Him, and learning from Him is the goal of the whole darn target practice. The goal is not shooting perfectly, the goal is being with the Father. Just showing up with a yielded spirit is pleasing to God. When I do that, I don’t have to worry about pleasing anyone else.

Do: Think of one person from whom you crave approval or are afraid of disappointing Ask God to help you surrender those feelings to Him, and to live in the constant available pleasure of your Father.

Pray: Thank you God, for the gifts that you have given to me to use in worship and work for you. I don’t want to try to please other people any more. I don’t want the frustrating process of never being able to get it right. I want to please You alone, because You love me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.