People are good, when you serve them. They will destroy you, when you seek to please them.
Without the Holy Spirit you will become a people pleaser.
You will live your life for their approval and you will die in your life from their rejection.
You'll be a butt kisser. Let me just put it 21st century because I see some of you are not getting
it. You will just walk around on eggshells. When the Holy Spirit is on you, it's not that
you're rude. I'm not talking about that you mean. I'm not, I'm not saying you're a jerk or you're
walking around just being harsh, a dictator or some dominator. I'm not talking about that. But
when it's done with the Holy Spirit, even when you're strong and authoritative, people have a
fear of God. When there is no Holy Spirit, it's all lovey-dovey. It's as though you're seeking
to love them but behind it is a fear of people, fear of losing people. What will they think of me?
I genuinely believe that Jesus did not die on a cross because he loved people.
In fact when He was talking to Nicodemus He didn't say, "Nicodemus for I so loved the
world that I came to die for it." What did He say? "For God loved the world that He sent Me."
When He was dying, when He was in a Garden of Gethsemane, you don't see Jesus praying this
prayer, "Father get the cup of suffering close." "Why?" "Can't wait to drink it." No, He says,
"Father, get the cup away from me if possible." "Why?" "I don't want to drink it." I don't want
to paint a picture for you that Jesus did not love you that's why He didn't die on a cross
because He loved you, but I want you to think realistically. You and I, He was just like us
and what motivated Him to go on the cross, it was not love of people. It was love for the Father.
I know we say, "I was on His mind." I'm sorry to burst your bubble, His Father was
on His mind. Why? If you ever want to last in Ministry, people cannot be the motivator
because people are like what Matthew Barnett said on this stage. He said,
"You want to be a bridge to a dying world, you have to be ready to be walked upon."
People will hurt you, people will reject you, people will talk about you, under appreciate
you. All the bad stuff that you can think of, they'll do and a little bit more on the top.
And the only way you will live your life loving those people is because you're first sold out to
Jesus Christ. Everybody started their ministry like that, but with time we are like King Saul,
we drift from walking before the Lord and serving the people, to walking before people and pleasing
the people and realizing it's never enough. It will never be enough. And when people become
the primary motivation of why you do what you do, you will never fulfill the call of God in
your life and you realize, it's the first sign that the Spirit of God is not filling your life.
Spirit of God fills your life to serve people, not to please them. If you live your life
pleasing people, doing what you want, you're a tail not the head. Henry Ford said this, "If I
would follow people's advice, I wouldn't give them a car. I would give them a faster horse."
People wanted a faster horse. I didn't follow people's advice, I followed my vision.
As leaders, as Home Group leaders, as ministers in this room, as people who are filled with Holy
Spirit, I want to challenge you to tell you this: "Do not flow. Only dead fish flows with
the current." I am not saying we should reject people and not serve people, but as Christians
our first allegiance is to our Savior and to the Holy Spirit. And when we are filled with
Holy Spirit we will lead our generation further in God. Actually we will love people more than if
we seek to please them. In reality when you seek to please people, you don't love people. You are
insecure and you love yourself, and you're using people to build and fix your insecurity. You don't
care about people. You're just using them like a napkin, because in reality you're in love with the
fact that you've broken an inside and you want to use their opinion to fix that brokenness. But only
Holy Spirit can fill the brokenness, He can fill that brokenness, He can fix that brokenness and
actually give you a genuine, unadulterated, purely motivated love for those people.
Amen. Being filled with Holy Spirit helps me to serve people
instead of pleasing them. When you serve them, you're free not to please them.
Your friends, social media, what the world thinks of you. That fear gets gone when you are filled
with Holy Spirit. When you are not filled with Holy Spirit you are imprisoned by their opinions.
Everybody is very cool in high school .10 years later most of them are extremely overweight,
their parents already took their cars away. The ones that they were showing off with at school.
All the brand clothes, they can't afford now to pay for child support because they have children
in different nations from different countries. And you quickly find out everyone who was cool
in high school, is a fool after high school. And opinions of people that you were so imprisoned by,
your matter to be included in that little clique and that little club, and today you
can't even remember their names. I remember when I was in high school, I had a minivan.
This is the one I could afford, 300 dollars and my dad got it from some kind of an auction and
so I drove it. They come, they called me "family man." They called me all kinds of names at school.
You know but the beautiful part was this, I know that, I knew that I wasn't good looking.
Like I knew that, it wasn't like a revelation okay. It was pretty obvious.
Secondly, I knew that I wasn't athletic and I didn't have musical abilities. So I already lost
the game of winning somebody's approval. Like I already, before even the game, I already lost.
I got disqualified. So what gave me freedom is this: I never had to live for their approval
because I knew I'll never get it. It made my life so much easier. I see them over there flashing and
trying to improve and impressed, you know go to a prom. And I'm like, my church believes not going
to the prom. I don't even have to win nobody's approval because I'm not even going to that prom.
No girl's gonna go with me, why? Because first, I'm not going there, why? Because
I'm a Christian. Period. It made my life so much easier. Yes, did people have opinions?
All the time. I see opinions are like feet. Everybody has them and sometimes they stink,
and last time I checked you can't fill your car's gas with someone's opinion.
Go to the gas station after the service and try to use their opinion to put gas in your
car. If it doesn't help you to fill your car with gas, it shouldn't fill your mind with anything.
Their opinion is their opinion. So years later I graduated you know, and because I didn't live my
life competing for their attention, I didn't wear nice stuff. I always wore things from Goodwill or
Valley Village. Valley Village now got closed down but Goodwill still exists. And so I wore simple
stuff just because I never bothered to impress anybody. I knew that I want to lose at that game.
Plus who cares who's popular in high school. It's not like it's going to matter in life.
I'm 22, 23 and those cool kids who made fun of me, who threw papers,
put them together and threw at my face in a classroom. I had one of the properties I was
renting out and I saw one cool kid pulled in and on this like long boat. Like it's not a boat, it's
just an old beaten up car. I saw it and it's "boom boom." Like make that, it wasn't the cool noise,
it was just broken up car. And I see him coming out and no disrespect to people who are pleasantly
plumb but he was extremely pleasantly plump. He comes out and I was like, "Is that... I'm like,
that's you? That's you from, from... You're the big football player?" He's like, "And that's..."
And he was about to say, he's like, "Are you the manager?" I was like, "Well I'm kind of you know
own this place." "Nah, can't, you own the place?" Hes like "How?". And I was like, "You drive that?"
And he looked at my car in the driveway. He said, "That's yours?" "Like one of them."
We looked at the place. We looked at the place. I looked at his, looked at
his application and I said, "I'm so sorry but I can't take you." I'm like, "You're a mess."
He's like, "We're bros, we go back." I was like, "Yeah of course we do, you threw papers at me, we
go back." I was like, "I could put you in prison right now for harassing me and bullying me."
And so I rejected his application, he kept texting me and and everything and then I drove back home
and I was like, "Man I'm so happy I didn't fight for people's approval in high school."
That approval, there's more use of toilet paper than their approval in your life. But the real
reason why you're fishing for their approval is because you're not filled with Holy Spirit.
When you're filled with Holy Spirit, you don't need their approval. You love them,
you serve them and you feel bad for them.
I just want to encourage all the young people, when you hit 30,
the things that you battle with right now, they're not going to matter.
But the only way you can get through these battles is if you walk in fullness of the Holy Spirit.
You may say, "But you don't understand, I don't like the way I look." I didn't either. When you
get filled with Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit helps you to look less at that mirror and more at this one.
Come on somebody, amen.