“For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.”
Galatians 1:10(NKJV)
I was engaged to be married for three months and my fiancé was a born-again believer and loved the Lord. While we dated, I witnessed him pray, and he often spoke of his relationship with God. Because of this, I believed that he was a spiritually mature man, and I had confidence that we were both ready and destined to marry. I had prayed for years to meet the right man. This was extremely important to me, because in my past, I had hurtful and failed relationships with men that weren’t the right fit for my life. I felt that I had stalled in my quest to be married, and when I met my fiancé, I felt that I had met someone that made up for all the hiccups and mistakes of the past. I was wrong.
The disappointment of meeting someone, falling for them, and then they turn out to be the opposite of what you thought is not new to many women. You think you know him, but nothing prepares you for the negative behaviors that come out when he’s no longer concerned with impressing you. Not all men are like this, but when we’re not as close to God as He’d like us to be, we can fall for the one who mirrors the intimacy we’ve lost with God.
Heaven is our home because it is the place where our Creator lives. Heaven and all its host are continually and constantly responding to the goodness of God with faith and gratitude. The purpose of everything that goes on there is to give glory to God. Anyone or anything that is glorious deserves glory, and there is none more glorious than our Heavenly Father. The purpose of our lives on earth is to continually and constantly respond to God with faith and gratitude. This is life in the Spirit!
The salvation that God has given us through Jesus Christ is a gift from Him. We’re not ungrateful people who are too selfish and rude to say, “thank you”, we’re God’s kids! We’re the people He set apart to be His very own, and He commands us to behave like we know it and imitate Him in all that we do. In the light of His unspeakable gift to us, our lives are primed and ready to display excellence, because Christ is in us. We’re to exhibit divine character, like our Master Jesus. Romans 5:2 tells us that because of our faith, Christ has brought us to a place of highest and underserved privilege where we now actually share in God’s glory. Ephesians 1:3 declares that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing because of our union with Christ. He’s given us the gift of Holy Spirit to dwell within us and to help us live powerfully in Christ.
God has guarded us from being ineffective and barren, because He’s given us the knowledge of Christ and equipped us with everything that we need to live through him. With all the wealth He’s given, 2Peter 1:5-8(NLT) says, “In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. 8 The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The blessings and goodness of God deserve a response from us, and just any ol response won’t do.
When it comes to the significant relationship we desire, many of us position our expectations ahead of our spiritual responsibility to God. When Adam and Eve fell from the position God had given them, they were disconnected from Him spiritually. They lost everything. The only way to be whole again is for the attachment and connection to God to be restored, and this is what Christ did for us. To bask in all that God has in store for our lives, our relationship with Him must be maintained by remembering the sacrifice of Christ and clinging to Him through a continual response of faith and gratitude.
The understanding of intimacy and connection to a man and the pursuit of it should never supersede our desire and pursuit of intimacy with God. If at any time it does, whether we’ve been dating the same guy for two years, we’re engaged, or even married, our failure to respond to the goodness of God will allow the devil the opening he seeks to destroy our unions. So that epic question, “am I trying to please man?” is one that draws a line in the sand about who exactly we’re honoring, worshiping, and adoring.
If your expectation for longevity, respect, unity and love in your relationship with a man is unmet by an intense commitment to God, the man will mirror this imbalance before you, no matter who he is. He will show you that your devotion is not ‘God first’, therefore it is imbalanced and without spiritual discernment. Relationships, more than any other circumstance of life, profoundly teach us that we are not in control. We cannot make the man love us and want to be with us. We should never be under the delusion that it’s our womanly charms or flesh that keeps him near. Only God’s love has the power to bind and keep us unified, and we must settle this in our minds and hearts.
God tells us in Proverbs 4:23 to guard our hearts because from them spring the issues of life. So, when a man begins to mirror the lack of intimacy in our relationship with God, and we then continue without response to our Heavenly Father, our expectations in our marriages and significant relationship can go unmet. The love of Christ is the foundation upon which our love for others will flourish and grow. So, we must obey the commandment of Christ in Mark 12:30 to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. When this is demonstrated in everything you do, the right man will join in communion with our commitment to honor God with all that you are, and he will mirror that honor for you and your union with him.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
“Am I Trying to Please Man?”, written by Kim Times, edited by Reverend Fran Mack for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2023. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.
