I see you’ve checked back in for Sunday’s Daily Devotional. That must mean you want St. Paul’s secret to friendship. Here it is: care more about what God thinks of you more than what anyone else thinks of you.
This is one translation 1 Thessalonians 2, starting in verse 4:
But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News, so we speak not to please other human beings, but to please God who tests our hearts. We never came to you (Thessalonians) with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed – God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others…
Paul was someone, it seems, who really wasn’t bothered by what people thought about him because he was focused on what God thought of him instead. What’s the result of that?
I know some people who say “I only care what God thinks of me” as a way to justify self-absorbed behavior. They say “only God can judge you” what they really mean is “I don’t need to pay attention to anyone else.” But that is exactly NOT how Paul decided to live.
He thought that if a person really values the approval of God first and foremost, it actually frees them to be a better friend – more loving, more thoughtful, less controlling. If you are living your life based on God’s opinion, then you can be free to care for other people. You don’t need people to secure your life because God secures your life.
Funny enough, this is exactly the kind of person God seems to be. God cares more about rescuing us than what we think of Him. God came to human beings in the form of an unremarkable man: Jesus of Nazareth who was, by all accounts, not especially powerful or educated or wealthy. God, in theory, could have chosen to be anyone like Caesar or Einstein or Steve Jobs. Instead God was Jesus.
Because God was pleased to be Jesus, we can please God and be free to be people with small egos and big friendships. We can care for people instead of needing them to think of us in a certain way. We can love as God has first loved us.
Until tomorrow,
H