Verse of the week

'We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts' 1 Thessalonians 2:4

It's very rare to meet someone who doesn't often dress/speak/act in order to win praise or friendship from others. Most of us worry what others think of us; most of us long to be popular. Even people who deliberately kick out against the prevailing fashion are still defining themselves in terms of what men think and expect. And actually as we seek to gain praise from others, we become slaves to that search.
That's why the Christian life is so liberating. The Christian no longer needs to think 'What will they think of me?' or 'How can I become, or stay, popular?' Because the Christian, lik Paul in this verse, is no longer desperately striving to please men; no, the Christian is striving to please God, the God who tests our hearts, who is pleased by inner rather than outer beauty, by motivation more than fashion, by our hearts more than our clothes. How wonderful to be freed from finding our assurance and confidence in what society says, and to be able to know that we can please not just our schoolfriends or our work colleagues or our footballing friends but the Creator God himself!
And that's also why the Christian life is so challenging. Paul writes this verse shortly after being kicked out of Thessaloniki because he refused to say what pleased people; instead he said the message of the gospel, and spoke of Jesus Christ and his death in our place. His words displeased people so much they rioted; the few Christians in the city were now being persecuted.
It often seems so much easier to please people rather than God; to keep quiet rather than speaking out, to do what the crowd wants rather than what you know God wants. Paul didn't care what the crowd wanted him to do, he cared only for what God wanted him to do. The challenge for us as Christians is to remind ourselves every day that as God's people we need be and should be no longer trying to please men, but to please God, the God who knows not just what we choose to show to others, but what is in our hearts.