There are millions of us “people pleasers” in the world. People, myself included, who are conflicted in their choices and actions based on the motivation of pleasing others. This seems like a selfless approach to life, but really, it can be a HUGE hinderance for the Christian life, because we are called to please God, not man!
Today’s episode of Marriage After God tackles this topic of people pleasing, why we do it, how it affects our marriage and our ministry as a couple, and what we need to do to stop!
WATCH
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWpHyeXzceY”]
LISTEN
READ
–
– Hey, we’re Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.
– Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.
– And today we’re gonna talk about how people pleasing will hurt your marriage.
– And stop your ministry.
– Hey, guys, thanks so much for joining us this week. We wanna encourage you to subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes.
– Also we love seeing you guys’ comments. Please take a moment when you’re done with this video and leave us a comment.
– So the topic of today’s episode on people pleasing actually came from our friends Audrey and Jeremy Roloph. And they have founded and manage Beating 50 Percent. Do you wanna talk about that a little bit?
– Yeah, it’s a marriage encouragement blog. They’re really good friends of ours. And the last time we hung out with them they said, hey, we have a podcast idea for you, and it was about people pleasing and how it could hurt our marriages. And to be honest, we’ve actually dealt with this and deal with it in our own marriage, pleasing people.
– Yep, so we’re gonna talk about that today. But I also wanna encourage you guys to check out Beating 50 Percent because it’s really awesome marriage encouragement. I think you guys will love them.
– So as we get into this topic, there’s gonna be a lot of people that are gonna be wondering what people pleasing is and where it comes from and at what level and what we’re talking about.
– I feel like, though, we other people who know exactly right when we say people pleasing because when Audrey presented the topic to me I was like I could totally talk on that because I’ve been there, done that.
– Because I do it.
– Yeah, so you might know.
– So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna break it up into three parts. And the first part is gonna be where does people pleasing come from? What invigorates that in us? And then the second part is going to be how people pleasing can hurt our marriages and how it’s affected ours. And we’ll give some examples.
– Yeah.
– And then the last part’s gonna be how it hurts our ministries. And we’ll also give some examples from our own personal life in that. So let’s just jump right in. And there’s a few reasons that we believe why we people please. And I think everyone that falls into the category of a people pleaser will probably fall into one of these subcategories of why they do it.
– Yeah.
– And maybe all of them. We struggled with each one of them, at various times. So why don’t you bring up the first reason why someone might be inspired, or drawn to pleasing other people.
– Yeah, the first motivator I could come up with, the one I struggle with probably the most, is fear of rejection. So, you know, just wrestling with, what others think about you and with that, I think that, the problem with that, is that we find our identity wrapped up in other people’s opinions of ourselves and not Jesus alone, not God alone.
– Yeah so the people that we look up to, the people that we love, the people that we want affirmations from and we wanna be identified by. You know we’re a people pleaser, you struggled with this.
– Do everything in our power to please them.
– To make sure that they are pleased by you, enjoy you, like you. There’s a quote I’m gonna read from Lecrae. He’s a Christian rap artist and it says, “If you live for people’s acceptance, “you will die from their rejection.” that’s kind of what we’re gonna get at today is this idea of who are we living for? And who are we trying to please? The first thing we just talked about, the reason why someone might be a people pleaser and desiring to please everyone in their life or just certain people in their life is that fear of rejection. You want to be loved and accepted by someone and they either do or they don’t. You’ve experienced, and we’ll talk about this later, but what happens when they don’t. And that chase of always trying to please them. The next thing that we believe animates a people pleasing spirit or attitude is pride or selfishness. Again a lot of these things are going to be wrapped up in each other and entangled. But let’s just look at this idea of pride and selfishness. I think about our home. We’re gonna invite people over and we’ve both done this. You wanna have the house clean and I wanna have–
– You mean immaculate.
– Immaculately clean.
– Perfect.
– The way it never is.
– The way it never is.
– Which there’s nothing wrong with that because there’s an aspect of that that’s hospitality. We want to make it nice for those people. So we invite people over and we want to wow them, we have everything together. Like our house is perfect order and this is how it always is and we have this mask we put on, and we kind of want to impress them. It’s not so much that we are needing their affirmation, but it’s more like we want to look a certain way to them. So we want to please them and we want them to see us a certain way.
– Like you said, there’s nothing wrong with hospitality and making sure your home is nice and tidy for when people come over. The problem that I’ve found is that in my people-pleasing attitude or nature it draws a response in me and it affects the entire family of rushing to get the house clean, being mad, or upset, or frustrated when people aren’t doing the things that I need them to be doing to make sure the house is in order before those people get there. Just feeling a sense of overwhelmedness. So I think that’s where the root of the problem is, is in my response in trying to please others.
– We’re trying to look a certain way. We’re trying to wrap everything nicely and it’s all a heart thing because we should be hospitable. We should kind of clean up and not have someone walk into a pigsty.
– But not to a point of chaos in my heart, stress.
– Yes, it’s a heart thing. Are we doing it to please those people and to have an image? Or are we doing it because we love those people and we want to bless them? There’s a different perspective that we’re taking. There’s a third kind of category or direction that we want to go with why someone might please people.
– This one’s just you purely just want to avoid conflict. You’re more of a passive person. Or maybe you’ve never learned how to navigate those hard conversations or hard situations. I’m one of these as well. I don’t like rocking the boat, when they say that. I don’t like being someone who confronts anyone or anything. So my nature is to please everyone just to avoid that.
– We’ll find out later on that this is where it starts affecting ministry. When God might want us to say something and we don’t. Those are kind of our three areas is pride and selfishness; fear, just fear of man; and the other one is just conflict. We want to avoid conflict, we want everything to be nice, and pretty, and never rough, never sticky. All of this has to do with relationships and who we are identifying with in our relationships. Do we have our identity in Christ? Are we trying to please him, or are we trying to please people? Therefore our identity’s in those people and what they see of us.
– I do think it’s important to talk about relationships for a minute. Maybe identify some of those specific relationships that we have. When we’re married we have specific relationships–
– That we’re prone to.
– We’re prone to please the other people above our own marriages. This is where I wanted to bring up, too, some of our experiences. But you know, sometimes let’s say a wife in the relationship might tend to please her mother or her mother-in-law. Maybe it’s her father, her parents in general over her husband.
– We have never dealt with this.
– So everything that she does is motivated by her responses in these relationships because of people pleasing. Maybe it’s a husband and his siblings. There’s a lot of different, very intimate, and important, significant relationships that can be affected by people pleasing.
– This is a perfect transition because I think we should talk about how people pleasing and having and out of order perspective of who we are and who we’re trying to please in this world can affect our marriage. You just mentioned parents. If, and we’ve dealt with this. You are trying to please your mom, or your dad, or your parents in some situation how have you experienced that harming me specifically?
– I mean I just go straight back to the beginning of our relationship or kind of right before our relationship really became a mature one. Right before we got married. We were engaged and my parents didn’t want me to get married. And they didn’t want me to do missions. I share about this in my book, The Unveiled Wife. There was just some tension in the relationship with my parents because they had a different vision for my future.
– I remember this.
– There was some conflict there that I really wanted to avoid because I love my parents and I wanted to be a fulfillment of their vision for my life. But at the same time I was in love with you, I was eager to serve God with you.
– It would have just be easier to cut us off, cut me off to avoid that hardship.
– Exactly, and so I tried breaking up with you. I remember it was really intense, really hard conversation with you–
– In our car at church, I remember.
– You wouldn’t let me break up with you.
– I was like you’re not allowed to break up with me.
– Which means that I actually had to grow in this area of navigating a hard conversation with my parents. We worked it all out so I don’t want to leave you guys hanging, but my parents were very supportive.
– They weren’t being bad, they just feared for you and the loved you.
– They had opinions that they wanted to share with us and it was just hard for me. We had to navigate that and things worked out. My parents are so supportive of us and our ministries. I didn’t want to leave that part out. But having to even address that issue was really hard for me. Then throughout our marriage there’s just been times where you know my parents would say something and I tend to agree with them over you just because of having lived with them my whole life and trusting them and wanting to please them. That I would even go to the length of severing our agreement in order to–
– Please them.
– Yeah, and they weren’t even asking for me to please them. That’s the funny thing, I don’t know why I was so drawn.
– It’s a longing for identity. You wanted to be accepted by your mom.
– I wanted approval.
– Approval, you wanted love, things that you felt like you needed to earn, which of course you don’t. They love you.
– They love me already, yeah.
– But some people that are listening might not be in a situation like that. But even if they’re not, even if the family members that they’re trying to seek approval from aren’t giving them the approval, that further solidifies the reasoning why it’s not healthy to be a people pleaser because like that Lecrae quote, they may approve of you today, and tomorrow something you did is gonna, and it’s a control thing. Now you’re enslaved to them and their relationship and how they view you. You’ve struggled with family relationships. In the beginning of this I was asking, how have I struggled with people pleasing and she’s like you don’t struggle at all with people pleasing.
– I said you’re the complete opposite of me.
– I do tend to not play in that role of trying to please people. I’m usually like I don’t really care. Not in a mean way, but I don’t try to please people. But there are ways that I have found myself. I probably land more in the pride and selfishness side of people pleasing. A perfect example is I love to be needed. So if I have a friend or an acquaintance or someone who has gotten to know me and they know that I have a skill or a way or thinking, or a talent that they could use and they need and they request that of me I feel good. I’m like oh, they need me, or I’m valuable to them. And this has happened in the past with us. I’ll tend to say hey, so-and-so needs me. And you’re like–
– You’ll literally drop everything.
– I drop everything to go spend time with that person and give them of myself altruistically. But really it feels good to be needed. So I’m pleasing that other person.
– Even if it’s an inconvenience to the family, our schedules.
– Which it has been tons of times. Or, ’cause it’s not wrong of me to want to go and help someone, but when it’s been like Monday–
– What’s the cost?
– And then Tuesday, and then Thursday, and then Friday, and then Saturday and all week. You’re like you’ve been doing stuff for people all week. Can we go do something as a family? I might not do that one a wide scale with a lot of things, but I do seek, I please people in that sense.
– That’s a good example, I like that. I appreciate you sharing.
– I noticed it though, and a perfect recent example is I’ve been going to this CrossFit gym and I’ve got some really awesome relationships with all the people that go to my class. They planned a party this last week. I told them yeah, I’m gonna try and come, it’s gonna be awesome and I forgot to tell you.
– And I booked something else the exact same time.
– Something else that was more important. It was a parenting class, it was also gonna be like there hadn’t been one in a while. You’re ready to go and I’m like oh hey, it’s Friday.
– I got babysitter and everything.
– I was like hey, this Friday we’re going to this party.
– She’s like uh no, that thing is happening on Friday, also.
– I’m like oh my gosh, and we almost agreed to you go to the parenting class.
– He negotiated that he would go to his thing and I would go to mine.
– Then I finally, that’s just dumb. I’m gonna cancel it, I’m gonna see them every single day this week it’s gonna be fine. So I canceled and yeah, we can do something else. So I canceled and we went to the thing together and actually we talked about it all night. It was awesome. But I realize that because I love those people at my gym and I’m excited about it, I care about what they think of me and I already told them. I kind of committed and they were excited to see me and I felt needed. So there’s just all this stuff. Not that it is wrong that I wanted to go. I just could have easily messed up this to fulfill that and I didn’t need to do it. It wasn’t a big deal. There will be more things. I would say that was a win recently. I haven’t always won, there have been definitely times I’ve fallen into the people pleasing trap.
– There’s another example of people pleasing that I want to bring up. I’ve struggled with this I would say our whole marriage. But I’ve gotten better at not needing so much control in this area. But because I’m such a people pleaser and I care a lot about what other people think, I’ve really struggled in our relationship with before we go somewhere or if people are coming over give you what I call it, I think in my mind the run down. Like okay so if you’re gonna be talking to this person make sure you don’t say this or that, or say it like this this.
– Make sure you always bring up, you use these certain words. Don’t use those words.
– Oh my goodness you guys, I’m so controlling with this. Again have I gotten better?
– Oh you totally have.
– But in the beginning of our marriage I cared so much about what people thought of us as a couple that I thought oh no, Aaron is going to make me look bad or make us look bad if he does this, this, or that. So I would prep him even before church. We would go to a Wednesday night Bible study with other married couples and I’m like please just do this, don’t do that.
– Sometimes you talk too much Aaron, so don’t talk too much. Make sure you only talk for 40% of the time and not the whole time. I would say though, even though that came out of a place of trying to please people, we’ve actually talked about this. Okay I think you’re trying to please them more than your are trying to be one with me. It has been beneficial at some levels because I do need sometimes help. But you’ve changed the way you’ve approached me. You say hey, just so we are aware of the kind of situation or the kind of people we are going to be around here’s how you can be. It’s turned from protecting your, our image. It’s turned into protecting me, which is a big difference. So yeah, that’s been a contentious area of ours. But yeah, you’ve gotten much better at it. I think you still struggle with it but no big deal.
– Let’s talk about how, yeah not as bad. Let’s talk about how people pleasing can affect the marriage relationship. We touched on some examples, but like just overall general.
– Yeah, well if we’re trying to please other people we’re gonna like you were saying, we’re gonna do things to make sure the other person is comfortable or happy, or content with us. How often is the person outside of our marriage looking out for the interest of us? Not that the person’s even trying to do anything, but if I’m trying to please that person I’m gonna go give them my time, my attention, my energy and not look inwardly in our witness, in our relationship.
– Essentially it’s putting that person or those people on a pedestal.
– Where they don’t belong.
– And giving them a greater value than your spouse.
– Right, but I’d like to put this into perspective also. Putting my spouse on that pedestal. If you remember in the beginning of our marriage we both had this expectation that the other person was gonna fulfill all of our desires and needs. In the moment they didn’t it broke us all apart. So it was kind of like this opposite effect of I need to please you because I need something from you. But it always didn’t work because I could never please you enough and you can never please me enough. That’s caused a sever in us and it’s broken expectations. Essentially what we’re doing is we’re putting people, either our spouse or other people in a position that they don’t belong in our life. I want to read a scripture that Paul wrote. It talks about this idea and it’s not a direct doctrinal teaching of like what he said is what you should do. It’s a way of looking at who we’re to please. The scripture I want to read is from Galatians, chapter one. It’s Paul writing to the church of Galatia. He’s talking about himself, but listen to his perspective. He says, “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.” That position we’re putting people in when we try and please people in relationships is we’re putting them in the place of Christ. If I’m trying to please this person over here and I’m going to organize my life, and the way I talk, and the things I do so that this person accepts me and approves of me and loves me, and gives me what I need from them, my identity, then I’m not a servant of Christ. I’m a servant of that person, right? If you would have given into your mom at that point when you were a full-grown adult and you were about to make an adult decision with us, you would have been serving her, not me, right? Or we can look at that in any situation. Any situation where we crumble under like oh, this person’s not, what have I done? My identity’s no longer Christ, it’s no longer in what the Word says about me. It’s in what that person has said about me, what they think of me and how they presented me to me. So Paul, his heart is, when we read this, what we can pull from it is saying who are we a servant of? Are we a servant of people or of Christ?
– That’s really good and I think that what’s important to just kind of rest on this verse for a minute and really consider its impact in us independently but also as a marriage and how we were talking about ministry is when we feel prompted to speak into someone’s life, a people pleaser usually won’t if it’s one of those conflict or hard situations because we don’t want to rock the boat. We don’t want to cause any strife or discomfort for those people or for us. I think that there’s probably been many times, many opportunities wasted because people pleasers aren’t willing to go there to serve that other person in love, to address something hard in order for growth to happen.
– Which is this perfect transition into how people pleasing hurts our ministry. You know we talk about a marriage after God that our marriage is our ministry in this world. They’re a ministry to each other and they’re a ministry to everyone in our life. Just like Paul, right now he is saying am I seeking approval of man or God? He’s talking about, I’m telling you something really hard right now. And I wouldn’t be telling you this if I was trying to get your approval. So he wasn’t, he was like I’m not getting your approval. I’m trying to get approval from God. Therefore, I’m gonna tell you what God wants you to hear because that’s the best thing for you. It’s actually like you said, it’s more loving to be approved of God and to seek to please God for the people in our life than it is to be getting our approval and seeking to be loved and approved of by people.
– I feel like it would just help emotionally and mentally going into all of our relationships to not have that chaos or stress of having to please that person that’s really hard to please. Or please all those relationships in our life when really all we need to be focusing on is pleasing God.
– Right, because if we did that then as Paul’s saying, he’s like I’m telling you something right now and I’m not trying to please you in doing it, I’m trying to do what God’s asked me to do. But in doing so he gave us these words of life and he taught the Galatians the words of life. He did that to please Christ, not them. It actually benefited them. If we love God and we get our identity from him, we get our fulfillment from him and our contentment in him, and we believe the things he says about us then it doesn’t matter who it is. It could be your mom, it could be my mom, it could be my brother, it could be our friends. They could say whatever they want about us, we’re gonna know where we stand with God and we’re gonna be confident in that. We’re gonna present to those people what God wants us to, love and truth. We’re not gonna avoid being obedient to what the word of God tells us to do and calls us to do in other people’s lives.
– Another verse just to illustrate this point that you were making is Proverbs 29:25. It says, “The fear of man lays a snare, “but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.”
– That’s good because that word, fear, we haven’t brought up yet. Other than in the beginning of a motivation. Essentially our people pleasing is actually a fear, right? So I’m gonna please that person because I’m afraid that they’re gonna reject me. I’m afraid that I’m not gonna be fulfilled. I’m afraid that I’m not gonna be worth, or valued, right? So we have this fear of man and their opinions of us.
– And it says that that lays a snare, which is a trap.
– It’s a trap.
– Which means people pleasing doesn’t work.
– It doesn’t work, we have an example of this. This is a funny example. I’ll lay the foundation and you can say how it made you feel. Jennifer, I always try and encourage her to go live on Facebook, go live on Instagram which I get it’s hard. I have a hard time doing it. She’s like I want to have my makeup done, I wanna do my hair, which is totally normal. So she’s trying to do this and she’s trying to present herself a certain way. I tell her, I was like Babe, people love you for who you are. That’s why they love you that you aren’t afraid to do that. But she still wants to and there’s nothing wrong with that. So one day she got all ready, she had her hair done, she had her makeup done and she did this Instagram video and she’s like, I felt so good. And one of the first messages she gets, what did it say?
– Oh it was terrible you guys, my heart crushed. But another woman just told me how it’s really important that I need to make sure that I take some time to get myself ready for the day.
– And put in order.
– And make sure that my hair and makeup’s done.
– Did she say you looked unkept.
– Yeah, she said I looked unkept and you guys, I was literally reading it and go oh my goodness, no. Did I look that bad?
– I couldn’t believe somebody messaged you that in the first place.
– I was really embarrassed.
– But like she did all that she could to look presentable.
– I was like there’s really nothing else I could do to make myself any prettier or better.
– I think one of the first messages she got from that live video was like hey, I really wish being in the ministry like you are, I really wish you made yourself look better.
– Presentable, yeah.
– Presentable, like put some makeup on, do your hair. That’s what they told her.
– Sorry if anyone else feels that way.
– What we’re getting at is you can try and please people, it won’t work because–
– People have opinions.
– And they’re gonna change. It doesn’t matter what you do, they’re gonna always say one thing or the other, right? For me, I used to have big old wood plugs in my ears. I’d have people be like oh, those are so awesome, I love that. Then I’d have other people be like what are those ugly things in your ears? You look ridiculous, right? That’s the two things I get. I take them out and now I get talked about because of the holes in my ears. I had one guy even say like I used to follow you because you had a beard and you had plugs in. Now you don’t have those and that’s the only reason I followed you.
– I didn’t know he said that, I’m sorry.
– There’s nothing I’m gonna go that’s gonna please everyone. But that’s just the funny part of the trap. You’re just in this trap of continually trying to please people that are continually changing their opinions about the world.
– And yet I just have this thought that how often in marriage are we really seeking like we do with other people to please our spouse that much? Like with that much effort and that much energy?
– It’s rare.
– I’ll admit I don’t try and please you as often as I’m trying to run around like a chicken with my head cut off to please so many other people. That’s a problem.
– And if there was anyone where, if there was any person that we should probably seek to please other than the Lord, it would be our spouse.
– Yeah, it should be our spouse.
– But that should be in the context of we’re pleasing God in doing it. Like I’m seeking his approval, therefore I’m going to love you as Christ loved the church and you’re gonna honor and respect me as you’re called to do, right? So you’re right,our spouse, not often, right? That’s really funny. Let’s go into a little bit more on this idea of how it can hurt our ministry. We just talked about how it might make us avoid saying something that might be difficult to say. Calling someone out on our sin. Saying like hey, you shouldn’t be walking in that. In a marriage, telling a husband hey, is your wife cherished? Are you loving your wife the way you’re called to love? It might be a hard conversation if I was caring more about their opinion of me than I was caring about God’s opinion of me which isn’t loving. It would be me avoiding the truth in love and faking that I love that person when I really should be telling him and warning him. Because the Bible tells us to do that. Let’s go further into this like we’re trying to please people and we have a ministry. We’re supposed to be preaching the gospel and living out the gospel with our lives and spreading the word of God. You know, if we’re people pleasing we’re not gonna do that. In First Thessalonians two, verse four, Paul says this. “But just as we have been approved by God “to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, “not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.” And I’m gonna use this to transition to another scripture. But we have to know this, God tests our hearts. So when we were talking about cleaning the house, so whether or not anyone ever recognizes that we’re doing that to be approved of by the person coming to visit us, God knows our hearts. Are we doing it to be hospitable to bless those people that are coming? Or are we doing it to receive praise and to be viewed a certain way?
– That’s so good.
– God knows it and we need to be aware of that ’cause we care what God thinks. God tests our hearts. Proverbs talks all about how he tests our hearts. So God tests our hearts and we want to please him. So that brings us to this second part of our ministry and how people pleasing can affect it and harm it and destroy it actually. If you want to read in Matthew, chapter six, verses one and we’ll talk about it.
– [Jennifer] “Beware of practicing your righteousness “before other people in order to be seen by them, “for then you will have no reward from your Father “who is in heaven. “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet “before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues “and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. “Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. “But when you give to the needy, do no let your left hand “know what your right hand is doing, “so that your giving may be done in secret, “and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And when you pray you must not be like the hypocrites, “for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues “and at the street corners that they may be seen “by others. “Truly I say to you they have received their reward.”
– So, man this is a powerful scripture. Jesus is about to teach the Lord’s Prayer and teach his disciples how to pray because they say Lord, how do we pray? He’s just talking about how we should be aware of the kind of practice of our outward appearing righteousness. The point he’s saying is, he’s saying hey when you do these things for God only, you won’t do it for the praise of man. And how often we’ve been here that we give, we’re generous, or we go and volunteer, or we go and do this thing over here. Or we dropped food off for so-and-so, or we went to build this thing, or dig this ditch or whatever it is that we are doing for God and in reality in our hearts it was to be seen. We wanted everyone to know how righteous we were. We wanted everyone to know how good we were and how generous we were. That’s a danger because what that is is we’re doing ministry for the sake of pleasing the eyes of man and not pleasing the heart of God. Whether or not ministry happens things are getting done. The heart that we’re doing it in is destructive and it breaks God’s heart. God says you got your reward. All the people that you wanted to praise you and say good job, and oh you’re so good, and how holy you are, that’s your reward. If we truly want to please God, who are we gonna do it for?
– We need to do it for him.
– We need to do it for him. That doesn’t mean we’re never gonna do something that’s visible.
– Right.
– Just the same example of the house and the guests. There are gonna be things that are visible, but we have to evaluate ourselves. We’ve gotta say Lord, who am I doing this for? Am I going to volunteer for this thing over here because I know that those three people right there know that I’m gonna do it? And I wanna make them, I wanna prove to them that I am a holy person. Or I’m giving money, or time, or energy to this thing over here because that person over there sees it and I want them to think of me a certain way. Is that what we’re doing it for? For the praise of man, for the eyes of man to be on wat we’re doing? Like I said, even if the ministry’s happening, it’s not because what God wants is our hearts. And he wants us to do things for him, not for the praise of man, not to be seen. So our encouragement to you is to ask God to show you if there’s any areas of your life that you are seeking the approval of man rather than God. This doesn’t mean we’re not trying to be at peace with people, because the Bible tells us to be at peace. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t going out of our way to bless and honor people. It doesn’t mean we’re doing those things. It’s a heart thing.
– It’s a heart check.
– Why are we doing it?
– Evaluate your hearts and see where you’re landing on this.
– Yeah, the Bible tells us to do all things as unto the Lord, and not for man. Do you have any more thoughts on that?
– The only thing that I really want to stress is that a marriage after God recognizes that their marriage is a ministry. So all the things that you do with your spouse, your marriage is a ministry. If you’re a people pleaser and you’re seeking to please other people outside of your marriage relationship, no matter why or what the situation is, and it causes contention in your marriage, it severs that agreement, that unity, there’s a problem and it’s gonna disrupt the ministry impact that your marriage can make. So the reason that we’re bringing this message to you today is because we want you to recognize that your marriage is a ministry and we want you guys to evaluate your hearts and make sure you’re not people pleasing just to seek out approval from others. And to make sure that you’re not being a source of that contention in your marriage because we want your marriages to be impactful.
– The prayer that we have for you is that you would examine your hearts. Allow the Holy Spirit to examine your hearts. And turn your hearts towards God, please, him alone. Whatever he asks you to do, do it for him. So we just pray that this encouraged you today. We thank you for listening and we look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today’s show? Find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.
