Have you ever lain awake at night with your mind spinning over an insult or rejection? I sure have. I wish I was as strong as I apparently look when it comes to taking hits from people who are displeased with me. If you are a people pleaser, you know what I’m talking about. It is hard to come to the reality that someone simply doesn’t like you if you are that type of person. People pleasers suffer from any kind of rejection and the pain of a direct assault can last for months. Truth be told, part of the problem is that we keep poking at the injury like a sore spot in your mouth that you just can’t stop touching with your tongue. If you are also a people pleaser, my prayers go out to you! Sometimes I just wish I didn’t care so much.

The flip side of this personality type is that because we do care, we often feel and respond to other people’s pain in an effort to mitigate their suffering. I bet if you put people pleasers in a room, you would find that they volunteer in care ministries in their churches, donate to the food pantry, go on mission trips, and extend Christ ‘s compassion to hurting people in the world. So here’s a thought, people pleasers: When you’re sleepless over an injury get up and do something good for someone. That will mitigate your own pain, too.

Our Scripture today talks about practicing real love. It succinctly makes a connection between Christ’s sacrifice for us and how we are called to live sacrificially for others. In our Message translation, Eugene Peterson contends that when we see a need and do nothing, God’s love disappears, and we are the ones who made it disappear.

1 John 3:16-24

^16-17 This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.

This should be something we practice daily in everything we do. When you post negative things about someone on social media, you are making God’s love disappear. When you speak out with anger when you could have held your tongue, you make God’s love disappear. When a disagreement causes you to leave a relationship and you burn the house down on your way out, you make God’s love disappear.

When We Practice Real Love

^18-20 My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.

When people pleasers like me get attacked, it’s not just the initial injury that keeps us awake. It is our incessant need to review the situation over and over and over again, criticizing our own actions and condemning our behavior. Our worried hearts get stuck on replay, and even when we try to repair the relationship, we fail to shut down the internal turmoil that the bad encounter has brought. It is hard for us to accept that there are some people and situations where resolution isn’t possible, and truthfully, the other party doesn’t care. They have moved on to criticize someone else while we allow them to live rent free in our heads.

That’s when it’s time to let go and give it over to God. God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.

^21-24 And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.

This last section is the real goal for everyone, people pleasers or not. God invites us to please him, not others. He invites us to love one another, keep his commands, live deeply and surely in him, and experience his abiding is us through the Sprit that he gave on. So if you are still feeling the sting of someone’s negativity, let it go.

God has set you free.

Bold and Set Free by Michelle Robertson