Recently, I received a call from someone in the community. The individual explained that they had just moved here from another state. I welcomed her and thanked her for calling. She then got straight to the point. She said, "Are you a hell fire and brimstone preacher?" Before I could answer, she went on to say, "I mean are you like John Hagee (a well-known TV preacher)I want a preacher like John Hagee. Well, are you?" I said, "If you are looking for a preacher like John Hagee stay home and watch him on TV because all you get here is me. And to be very honest, I have no interest in being likened to John Hagee." She hung up and so far as I know has not visited Living Hope.
The Bible gives a great challenge in Galatians 1:10 that is difficult to live, but the more you do, the more freedom it brings. "Am I now trying to win the approval of people, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ." I think these are good words for us to hear as we approach Christmas. As you think about how you will fit in all the extra holiday parties and as you try to figure out how you will buy all the gifts that are expected that you can or cannot afford, I encourage you and me both to remember the words of Galatians 1:10.
Christmas is a time when we are all put to the test of this verse: To whom will we play? Every person in your life has there own set of expectations of you. If you try to please one person you will offend another. Some of us will have yet another Christmas of stress and depression as we try to make everyone happy. But if you do that it is not the fault of the others in your life, it is your own. Just because people have expectations of you, does not mean you have to try to live up to them or down to them. Instead, Galatians 1:10 says to play to an audience of one...the ONE and only One that really matters. In fact, when you seek to live to the approval of God's love and purpose for your life, then you find yourself becoming, as one woman in our church family calls it, "Comfortable in your own skin." What a gift of God it is to know who you are and who you are not! What a gift of God to play to an audience of one rather than an audience of a 100 different expectations! What a gift of God to know that when I seek God's a approval it leads me to become more free in the me he made me to be!
Friends, let somebody else try to make everyone else in your life happy. Then you can concentrate on pleasing God and enjoying the freedom and acceptance that comes in and through Christ. So, again I say to my disappointed caller, "If you want John Hagee, watch him on TV." Because I am learning to be less and less interested in being who others want me to be and more and more hungry to let God make me who he made me to be!
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