People-Pleasing

Discussion Questions

1. Read Hebrews 11:1-16. Then read the devotional, “People-Pleasing.”    

2. What (if anything) do you believe is required of you to receive God’s favor? What informs your perspective on this? 

3. How do you notice God’s delight in you? Do you have a daily practice to remind yourself that God is pleased with you? 

4. Consider Hebrews 11:13, “[They] died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them” (NRSV). What is the feeling of spying God’s promises on the horizon in your life? How do you wait in faith for those promises? 

Devotional

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. … And without faith it is impossible to please God. – Hebrews 11:1-2 & 6b (NRSV) 

All my life, I’ve believed I’m not a people-pleaser.  

Then I started paying attention to my emotional relationship with email: The guilt over every message collecting dust for lack of a reply. The assumption of anger in an email’s tone. The avoidance of a message if I cannot immediately meet its need. The projection of disappointment, the perceived obligation to acquiesce, the default of an apologetic tone. 

I walk on eggshells around email like it’s my ex-husband: unpredictably volatile, a landmine of overwhelming and unrealistic demands that will explode if not pacified.  

Meanwhile, I manage 4 personal inboxes and 5 professional inboxes, which is a lot of ex-husbands to placate. 

And here comes Hebrews 11, harboring a dilemma that is intimately familiar to us people-pleasers and fawners: “How can we secure approval from Someone who is impossible to please? How can I be certain Someone is content with me?” 

“Faith” is not the answer to our search for certainty that God is pleased. Faith is the mechanism by which we dare to ask, “Does God require pleasing?” 

Is not God already pleased? Pleased to set healing before us? Pleased to plant hope within us? 

Is not God already abundant in pleasure—in the delights of heaven and earth, in the invisible that waits to unfold? 

Eggshells and insecurity are but for a moment. God’s love is for a lifetime. Disappointment may linger for the night, but unrestrained-by-external-expectations joy comes in the morning.  

Prayer
Lead us not into anxiety, and deliver us from email.