Human Praise: “an obstacle to becoming a follower of Jesus”
1 Thesalonians 2:6
“As for human praise; we have never sought it from you or anyone else.”
Can you imagine what would happen if you and your church took this verse seriously? It seems like we have it exactly backwards. So often we are consumed with the opinions of others. So often we are consumed with how our opinions effect the decision making of others. We live in a culture that is all about “us” and we take this idea into the church. Most churches (if we get real honest) are about keeping the congregation happy. Most pastors are consumed with getting “praise” from their congregation because “praise” means more money, more time, more power, more freedom, more position, etc. On the other side we are taught that if a decision doesn’t go our way; if the Pastor doesn’t please us in a way that we are happy then we will just take our toys and go home. It’s a sad reality. However, this seems to be the opposite of what Paul and his cohorts sought to do in their leadership of the church. Paul claims to never seek human praise from anyone regardless of who the person might be. For someone who wants people to like him, this is a painful lesson for me to learn; but it is a necessary practice I must take action on in my life. Today I am going to try to say and live by, “who cares about human praise.” Through God’s grace I am not going to seek human praise from anyone; today is about Jesus. Today is about putting on my “big boy” pants and acting like a real Christian that could care less about human praise and only desire to please his King. I hope you’ll join me.
chadpullins@connect2crossroads.com www.wedesiremore.com
