Who Do You Live to Please?

Reenactment of the Last Supper
Richland Nazarene Church
The loving mercy of Jesus Christ.
Who do you live to please? God or man?

Are you seeking the approval of God or of people? Or do you just live to please yourself?

As always, the choice is ours. It is up to each of us how we choose to live. What motivates your thoughts, words, and actions? Those are the things that subtly and perhaps even subconsciously guide our lives. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth about pleasing God by preaching, or sharing, the true Good News. What’s that you may ask? The Good News is the truth about Jesus Christ. His birth, ministry, death, and resurrection. He is the only god in the world who has come back from the dead. Beyond that, we know that by promises throughout the New Testament, Jesus Christ will be returning for His church, and we will live with Him forever—an eternity. Paul warns people not to be fooled by anyone that is preaching a false gospel. There were people who would intentionally, deliberately, tell lies. No truth comes from them. Who can you trust?

Now we can check anyone’s teaching against the very words of the Bible—but in Paul’s day not all of the New Testament was even yet written. Still, we have to be careful what we follow. Who can you believe? Compare what they preach with what God taught us through the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) as well as the other books of the New Testament. Do they appear to be the same message? God doesn’t change…and neither do the teachings He has provided to us. Choose wisely.

Who do you live to please?

 

I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ. Let God's curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed. Obviously, I'm not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ's servant. Galatians 1:6-10 (Underlined for emphasis.)

 

Prayer – Lord God, I choose You. Show me how I can serve and please You in everything I do. Help me to encourage others to deliberately seek You first in their lives—pleasing You above all. Guard our minds and hearts that we would not be deceived by someone distorting Your words as we know them from the Bible.

 

Meditate. Consider what motivates your thoughts, words, and actions.

 

Verse of Salvation ~ May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. Jesus gave his life for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live. All glory to God forever and ever! Amen. Galatians 1:3-5

 

© 2025 Text, photos, and illustrations by Mickey M. Hunacek. All rights reserved. 

All scripture quoted from the New Living Translation (NLT) unless otherwise noted. 

New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. 

Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Biblical search from Blue Letter Bible - http://v3.blueletterbible.org/search.cfm. 

 

Books by Mickey M. Hunacek

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