To the Likeness of Christ, Not to be Liked

To be liked by people, it is quite appealing, to get a pat on the back, or job well done. Often this is motivating enough for doing anything in this life.
It feels good to be liked and cared for, by those that you love and even those that you hardly know.
 A big drive in my life has been to please men so that they can praise me for my hard work or my good attitude, while forgetting about my heavenly fathers approval. I care more about looking good, and neglecting the one that is only good, God.
Traveling around Taiwan is always eye opening, I get to see a different type of culture, and a different kind of language to experience and lots of awesome food. I don’t really feel like a foreigner anymore I have been here so many times but none the less I am a foreigner here, no matter how much I know about Taiwan and feel apart of it.
In Taiwan I have noticed that most Taiwanese when you talk to them are very nice and always seem very interested in you and what you have to say. Now I know maybe someone who is Taiwanese could disagree but the way that I saw them treat Americans was like this.
They were always interested about God. They always wanted to know what I believed and wanted to know about God, but never willing to go deeper then to just know about him.  They were always asking questions but never really listening to the answers, always looking at Jesus as someone who was good but not LORD.
This was always frustrating  to me, sometimes I had just wished that they would be really rude to me and tell me they didn’t want to here what I had to say. Maybe some of this is due to being an American, but either way they are missing Jesus.
The desire to be approved by men will rule your life and when we focus on being liked by men we will miss Jesus, we will miss God.
This mind set is not only in Taiwan but it is also in America and around the world.
Often we don’t always realize that we seek the approval of men, it can be very deceiving. Here are some ways that we can tell if we wants mans approval over Gods.
Caring to much about are cloths and keeping up with the right styles, making sure we look good and that people will notice that we look good. Having the right education so that people will think that we are smart. Having enough money so that we can feel secure, but also that people will see that we are secure. So much of what we do is so that everyone around us can like and notice us. Its really scary when you start to think about it. I think what this really boils down to is, we love ourselves and we want other to love us. We are so selfish, so much of our lives is just thinking about us and what we want, and when we are focused on ourselves and people liking us we will find out that it is very empty and we will find ourselves friendless and even unlike able.

Look at what Jesus did, he may have been like by some people but his ministry was not based on people liking him. His ministry was based on loving us, and to love is much harder then to like or be liked.
To like something is easy, its just one click away, a simple thumbs up, its an attraction to someone with the ability to be reserved. But to love something or someone is unreserved it means to give ones self to them, love requires everything. Jesus gave everything up for us because he loves us. If Jesus’ ministry was based on people liking him, then he probably would have never been hated by the phrases and probably wouldn’t have been crucified. We would have no salvation, and Jesus would have gone down in history as a good man and not LORD. It was his love for us that brought salvation into the world and it was his love for us that got him killed. We are called to be in the likeness of Jesus and to be like him, which means that we die and we love those around us. We know longer care if people like us but we care about loving people. Love dies, love is not always like able and hurts at times, but love will be the one thing that will last forever. I think that our lives will be a lot more stress free when we learn to please God over men, to love over like, when we stop checking our Facebook to make sure people like are new selfie or new post. I want to live my life without people always having to like what I do. My life is for God not people and to be approved by Him, but this does not give me an excuse to do whatever I want, but a call to love.
“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another .” John 13:34-35  

Keep fighting the fight, don’t loose heart for Jesus is Lord and we have been made into his likeness his image through the power of the cross.
Keep me in your prayers always praying that I would know Him and know his power, and to speak boldly for His name sake.

David -