Wednesday, August 09, 2017

How to Please God, Not People

How to Please God, Not People

By Wendi Kitsteiner
Let pleasing God become bigger than pleasing people.
Wait. What?
How was it that, mere days after my fortieth birthday, I could be knocked upside the head by one sentence, convicted of something I’d been doing my entire life?
But there it was. Staring back at me on my computer screen. It was random. Just a photo and statement on my Facebook feed. But the words convicted me to my very core.
I’m not sure exactly when I began copiously people-pleasing, but I remember being incredibly worried that people didn’t like me in elementary school. I fretted to the point of being physically ill if I thought someone was mad at me. Then I watched as a bully made all my fears come true. She decided she didn’t like me and that she would try to get other girls to not like me. I spent months on end contemplating how to change people’s opinions of me and get these girls to be my friends again.
I grew. I matured. I married. I had children. Still, I worried about what people thought and what they said. I was a college athlete and always had plenty of friends. I was outgoing, and I appeared confident, but inside I was walking a tightrope.
To read the rest of this post, please jump over The Glorious Table. 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This stings a little and hits home. Thank you for posting this, and helping me realize I need to work on this same thing.

Wendi Kitsteiner said...

Keep on keepin' on with me!!!

TAV said...

I agree living a life with searching for justice and the morals that Jesus would have wanted may lose you "people" and friends who may be following a different path. I've come to be okay with that.