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This weekend I had the opportunity to enjoy our annual Men’s Campout event and fellowship with several different brothers from both our church and other churches around our area. During Friday evening, around a campfire, I was able to have a good conversation with a pastor who expressed some of the difficult realities that he has noticed with some surrounding churches in his local area.

He expressed how so many “churches” preach and teach in certain ways to try and show acceptance to everyone in culture, regardless of the fact that it was at the expense of truth. Their focus was more on not offending a certain people group rather than seeking to speak the gospel and the reality of sin unapologetically. And as I listened to some of the wild and grieving stories of these so-called “leaders” taking a stance in the middle when it comes to different cultural issues as to not offend anyone, I couldn't help but think of how crippling and ultimately destructive it is for a follower of Christ to fall into the trap of fearing man’s opinion over God’s.

No doubt this issue of man’s approval or validation has been a part of living in a sin-cursed world for centuries, and if we’re being honest, we've all struggled with it in some way, shape, or form. No one naturally wants to be the outcast. No one wants to be labeled as “the weird one.” We enjoy being liked, and it hurts us to be disliked or even hated by those around us.

But the reality is, scripture calls us, as followers of Jesus, to live for the audience of One and to proclaim His truth regardless of what other humans may think of us for doing so. Our concern for validation and approval is to be sought in our Savior’s thoughts about us alone, not the men and women around us.

Galatians 1:10 says, “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”

Colossians 3:1 says, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.”

All throughout scripture we see this truth spoken to us—that if we are bondservants of Christ, then He is who we look to for what we should do. Our focus should be on God’s evaluation of us, not our coworkers, family members, certain cultural groups, even brothers and sisters in Christ.

Our duty as followers of Jesus is to obediently proclaim truth, even if that means receiving backlash or mockery from the world around us.

As we move forward in our upcoming weeks, let’s challenge ourselves to resist the trap that these church “leaders” have fallen into of being men-pleasers, and let’s lovingly, yet unapologetically, proclaim the truth of the gospel and seek to only “please” an audience of One.

Serving Together,

Bro. Luke