"How can we distinguish between genuine acts of service and the dangers of people-pleasing in our daily lives, and what steps can we take to stay rooted in God’s truth amidst these challenges?"

Introduction:

In the journey of faith and self-discovery, navigating the pitfalls of people-pleasing can be a profound challenge. Often masked as a virtue, the compulsion to constantly seek approval can lead us away from God’s intended path of peace and purpose. This blog post delves into the intricacies of overcoming people-pleasing tendencies from a spiritual perspective, offering insights and strategies to reclaim autonomy and align with God’s calling.

People pleasing - oh, do I know that all too well. . I think a lot of us do.  I don’t think it’s an isolated thing like the enemy wants us to think that it is. I think it’s a very common, widespread thing.  But it seems that we’re all either too nervous, ashamed, or there’s too much self judgment to talk about it, right?  So, let’s talk about it, because God doesn’t want us operating in overwhelm, chaos, confusion, survival mode, or autopilot.  He doesn’t want His bride to operate from that place. 

I do understand that we’re in this world - we’re on this side of Heaven.  But, John 10:10 calls us to have abundant life.  We are the saints, we are the children, we are the head and not the tail, we are above and not beneath.  We are His bride.  So, guess what?  We get to learn how to operate from a state of peace, calm, joy, clarity, and agape love.  

I’m not saying it’s going to be perfect every day all day.  That would mean you’re a robot.  That would mean, you know, we would not be human if we were, like, 100% all the time.  That’s not human, that’s being a robot.  And that’s not how God made us. So there’s grace when I say this, but the goal is, how high of a percentage can we obtain to operate from a state of peace, purpose, calm, joy, agape love, shalom - like the shalom peace? Let’s bump that up a few notches because guess what?  We can. Because we’re His bride. We’re His children. 

And this is proving to be such a struggle for a lot of people. I know it definitely was for me.  And, I didn’t even know it was a thing.  How could wanting to help people be a negative? Right?  That seemed confusing.  Well, guess what? That’s the enemy’s job.  The enemy’s job is to kill, steal, and destroy.  He causes chaos and confusion.  So, what he does is he’ll take a God given strength, and he’ll put us in overdrive and it’ll spin us out and we’ll end up doing things that we were never even called to do.  Whoa!  There’s no judgment. There’s no guilt, shame, condemnation with that.  

Guess what though?  Now we can ask The Father, “Lord, show me. Shine Your light.  Is there something in my life that I stepped into?  Is there a role I stepped into?  Is there something that I’m doing now that’s past my season? Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? You gave me this strength, this call, to help people. You put it on my heart to help people but show me how to operate in that from a healthy version.” Because what we don’t want is to operate in our strengths, in an unhealthy version.  That’s a whole different conversation for another time.  

One of the perspectives that I started to get was, well if I’m overwhelmed in chaos and this, that, and the other, but I want to help people, like, it’s confusing.  So am I not supposed to be helping people?  Okay, what does that look like?  Because now, it’s tainted from the enemy.  

That gifting is now tainted from the enemy and what I’ve found I was doing, just out of pure survival mode-like tactics, was thinking, you know what? I’m gonna stop.  Like, I’ve got to just stop.  I’ve got to stop all of it because I don’t even know how to process this.  That felt out of alignment but that was the only tangible action step that I knew to do. 

I was operating in my strengths and giftings (that I knew the Lord had given me) in such an unhealthy state but at the time, I didn’t know that there was a difference between operating in an unhealthy or healthy version.  I didn’t know that.  We’re not accountable for what we don’t know.  But since we now know, we can do something about it!  It’s such a blessing to have that perspective instead of a negative perspective including judgment, guilt, shame, condemnation.  Remember, any time that comes in, that’s from the enemy.  That’s from the freaking pit of hell and he doesn’t get to do that to us because, guess what?  We are His bride.  

So, think of it like, if you’re competitive at all or if you’re an ambitious woman, a driven woman, a child of the Father, a daughter of God,  you can get the awareness and understanding that the enemy may be driving me out of my calling or purpose.  Oh, no no no no no!  He doesn’t get to do that.  He may have tried and may have succeeded for a minute but guess what?  God never loses a battle and he never wastes a battle. 

Hopefully that’s helpful in the perspective of pleasing people because we don’t have to get spun out.  What I was trying to do out of survival mode, was just squash it.  Just thinking I gotta stop because I can't keep operating in an unhealthy state.  Thinking the only thing I needed to do was just squash it.  Stop operating in it.  Just stop.  But, what I found was that we get to talk to the Lord.  

Starting with thanking Him.  We can say, “Lord, thank you for giving me this gifting of wanting to help and honor others and whatever works come into alignment with You.  But in this world, I’ve had the enemy just be able to run me ragged.  And it’s putting me in an unhealthy version of being able to operate in that strength”.  Then we get to ask for his forgiveness.  “I ask forgiveness for any time I came into agreement with taking on something I shouldn’t have, or stepping into a role that I was supposed to but it’s now past my season and I’ve stayed when I shouldn’t have.  I repent for any and every single one of those circumstances.” 

As I did, you may find a lot of this stuff is generational.  The Word says that it’s passed down from the third and fourth generations. It’s not just hair and eye color.  That’s a whole other conversation, too, but, I encourage you to look up what the Word says about the generations.  About things coming through the generations.  

So, I then took that as an opportunity to, not only anytime I operated in an unhealthy version of caring and helping others and caring and helping others but any time anyone in my generation line on my mother’s or father’s side all the way back to Adam, to clean up the mess and stop it with me so that we, our children, and our children’s children won’t have to operate from that state. 

We get to shift the perspective.  

We get to say “No more” to the  unhealthy perspective.  

Once we repent of those things, we get to lay every single one of those circumstances, that either you made or all the generations made, down at the Father’s feet.  We lay it under the feet of Jesus.  We plead the blood of Jesus over it.  We shine God’s glory light, His dunamis power, the resurrection power that rose Jesus from the dead, it’s in us.  So, we get to shine that light, the glory light, over each and every one of those circumstances. Then we ask the Father to just continue to show us how to operate in that healthy version.  Then, we go into praise and worship.  Thank Him for doing it and trust that it has been done.

Lastly, just stay in worship.  Continue to say “Glory, Hallelujah” or put on your favorite worship song or one that comes to mind.  Just get in a state of worship because worship is our warfare.  

When you do this, you’re strengthening that muscle. It’s kind of like going to the gym where say I just went to the gym for, like, three hours. How come I don’t have abs or like biceps or triceps or whatever, right? There’s going to be grace here.  There’s going to be a muscle that you’re going to have to, that you might find you have to flex.  

For some of you, it might just be an instantaneous, miraculous thing.  And praise the Lord, hallelujah!  And then, sometimes, there’s an opportunity to strengthen that muscle over time. So, when we do this, it’s not from a judgmental, guilt, shame, condemnation perspective.  It is from a state of grace and gratitude that the Father is showing you there’s still a little bit of that piece in you trying to bubble up.  

We’ll say “Oh no.  Let’s get that stuff up and out of our house.”  Our bodies are our temples.  Let’s have grace and any time that starts to bubble up, just being able to notice it is huge.  Like, being able to notice that bubbling up, you’re already ahead of the game.  You're able to notice it.  That’s huge because when you’re able to notice it, then you’re able to call it out.  

Then you’re able to go through the prayer prompts.  Then you’re able to go into a state of worship and praise and just, all of those things.  And over time, or either instantaneously, it’ll be different in each circumstance and it’ll be for each different situation, each person - it might look different every time, it’s okay - but this will help to get us operating in a state of purpose, in a state of peace, in a state of joy.

It’s so worth it, just to start.  Just to call things out for what they are, and begin noticing.  Call things out, going through the prayer prompts, it can bring such freedom if we just start incorporating those things into our every day instead of squashing our giftings.  

Instead of squashing them, we have God elevate them in a way that only He can. And it’ll look so much better than we would have ever been able to do on our own anyway.  We probably would have made it, like made whatever it is, pretty good, right?  But, He’s able to elevate it and in a way that’s not exhausting to us, a way that’s not overwhelming to us, in a way that isn’t keeping us in overdrive.  He does much on our behalf.  He does much on our behalf.  Let’s just thank Him for it.