From The Crucible (by Pastor Linda Pugsley)

Live for God, not for others and you’ll be a lot more content. Ever notice you can hardly please people sometimes. Not so with God—you can always please Him—just obey Him!

Competition, getting ahead, keeping up with the Joneses—whew—it’s exhausting. You don’t have to do that. You can come to God just as you are. He has no false, pre-conceived ideas of you and no expectations. He knows you were born spiritually handicapped and is not angry when you then stumble as you try to walk on His road to eternity.

Focusing on pleasing God takes time and discipline. But as you practice letting God be the “motor” that runs the machine of your life, then you can start focusing on being interested in what pleases Him.

That doesn’t mean you live in a cave away from people to be that focused on Him. Quite the opposite! Two things start happening—your life changes so that other people’s opinions don’t influence you over God’s opinions, and, second, that change in you, for the good, will start to attract others to the lifestyle of Jesus that you are emulating.

So getting closer to Jesus doesn’t mean you’ll get further away from people. It just means you’ll be more like Him as you walk among them. Endure the fire…it’s producing pure gold!

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