Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Chasing Carrots, Part 4: Approval

Episode Date: May 19, 2019

What really makes for a happy life? A dream job, a bigger house, or a new relationship? If you’re always hungry for the next big thing, but frustrated because it never seems to satisfy, it’s time to hop off the treadmill and chase after something ... Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, thanks again for joining us here at Life Church. You know, if you haven't done so already, we'd love for you to subscribe to our content. That way you can be notified the moment it goes live and a great way to stay connected throughout your week. And everywhere you go is through the Life Church app. It's free and you can download it wherever you download your apps from. But right now, let's go to this week's message

with our senior pastor, Craig Rochelle. Where your head at? Dang. Don't want to talk business, business. I guess I got to be the one to see this summer. Who really in this? And it's, we so fed up, my life, tent up, your time, bent up, big prayers, sent up. Could I do it out of, out of, um, glad that I found him, find him, um, cry with me.

Well, it's great to have all of you with us today at all of our life churches, our open network churches, our family, all over the world at church online. We're in a message series called Chasing Carrots, the continual pursuit for more. In fact, next week, we're going to wrap up this message talking about something very important. We're going to talk about the elusive pursuit of comfort. In our culture today, everybody wants to be comfortable, yet it's almost impossible to live by faith and to pursue comfort at the very same time. Then, two weeks from now, we're going to start a new message series that I'm incredibly passionate about.

It's called The Good Work. We're going to look at the book of Nehemiah for four weeks, and we're going to try to help you discern what is God's good work for you in this season. How do you know what it is? How do you do it? How do you find your good work? Today, though, we have something very special. I've got the honor of team teaching with your local campus pastor, and we're going to talk about

the pursuit of approval. Do you like me? Do you approve of me? The battle with trying to please people over trying to please God, we're going to talk about the pursuit of approval. If I can get a little help from all of you at all of our different locations, be honest. How many of you think that you might care a little bit too much what other people think?

Raise your hands right now. You battle with caring what other people think. If you're raising your hand right now so you don't hurt my feelings, you might actually have an issue with caring what people think. I like what Harriet Breaker says. She writes this, that the disease to please is actually a form of addiction. The disease to please is a form of addiction. She says, like a drug addict seeks drugs, people pleasers seek approval.

How do we know if we're actually battling with this need to please? I'll give you three problems that people pleasers battle. The first one, if you're taking notes, is this, that you obsess about what other people think. You obsess about what other people think. Do you like my new outfit? Do you like the music that I listen to? Do you like my hairstyle? Do you like the picture that I posted?

Are we okay? Why didn't you respond? Why didn't it take so long? I texted you. I saw the little bubbles come up, but you never ever responded. Are we okay? We obsess about what other people think. For me, I'm incredibly vulnerable to this.

perhaps the most vulnerable time is actually after I preach a message, and I'm wondering, how did I do, how did I do, I walk over, I sit down next to Amy, and I'm like a little puppy dog saying, you know, pat me on the head, did I do okay, did I do okay, did I do okay, did I do okay? You obsess about what other people think. The second big challenge at people-pleasers battle is this. You're often overly sensitive to criticism. We're overly sensitive to suggestions or any type of criticism. Your supervisor makes a suggestion about your performance and you fall apart.

You get one negative comment. You get difficult feedback. Your child tells you what they really think about your parenting or whatever and suddenly you fall apart. A hundred people can say something positive about you, but you get one piece of pushback and suddenly you find yourself really, really struggling

because people pleasers obsessed about what others think we're often overly obsessed and overly sensitive to criticism. And number three, you actually have a hard time saying no. Oftentimes, when we're so obsessed with what other people think about us, we struggle to say no when we realize that we really should. You may find yourself avoiding conflict at all costs. You don't want to hurt someone else's feelings, so you're going to try to do everything to smooth everything out.

The kid comes by your door selling wrapping paper, and what do you do? You buy the wrapping paper that you'll never use, the magazines you'll never read, you go to the party that you're dreading, and you go out with a guy that you'd rather not see ever again. Why? Because you find it so difficult to say no.

Some of you, this is exactly where you live. You're overcommitted all the time, always, and someone else asks you, can you help out? And you say, sure. And in the back of your mind, you're thinking, why not? Because I don't have anything better to do with my life? You find yourself overcommitting.

Here's what Scripture says. Proverbs 29, verse 25, says this. Fear of man, fear of man will prove to be a snare. Let's pause there for a moment. The Hebrew word translated as snare is the word mochaesh. And this word very literally means, it means a noose for catching animals, or it means a hook that was generally in the nose of an animal. Now, I'm not going to show you this because I don't want to gross you out, but if you can imagine a hook in my nose, this is what fear of man is like.

It's like an animal being pulled around all the time by a hook because you are hooked on what someone else may think. That is a very accurate picture what it's like when we're obsessed with what other people think. We're hooked and we're being pulled in all different directions. Fear of man. It's a trap. It's a snare. It is not of God. But scripture says this, fear of man will prove to be a snare,

but whoever trusts in the Lord will be kept safe. Fear of man, fear of what people think, it'll always be a trap that will pull you away from God's will, but whoever trust in the Lord will be kept safe. I've got good news for you today, and that is whoever trust in God and his presence and his assessment of who you are and what he's called you to do,

you will be kept safe, and it's my honor now to invite your local campus pastor to come help you put your trust in the Lord. Would you help me welcome your campus pastor today? Life Church! It is so humbling to be able to share the stage with Pastor Craig to bring God's word. If we haven't met, my name is Chris Beale.

I'm the pastor of this location of Life Church. And today we're talking about chasing approval. And the reality is I know that you guys need this desperately. I, however, don't struggle with this. Like, I really don't care what you guys think of me. And so this is all for you. I just want you to know that. If you could, though, I'm a little rattled.

I'm going to just take a second and gather my thoughts before I continue. Give me a sec. I can't believe I have to follow my pastor. I got to follow Craig freaking Groshell. Okay, Chris, take a deep breath, hold it together. Man, I am nervous. I mean, I don't want to let Craig down. Worse yet.

I don't want to let God down. Okay, Beal, pull your mind together. You can do this. It's not like it gave you the whole message. You have 22 minutes. I'm pretty sure you can't kill the church in 22 minutes. At least I hope not. Well, here it goes.

Okay. Help me Jesus. I hope they like me. I hope my jokes work. I hope I don't say something stupid. Okay, stand up straight. Look confident. You've got this.

Smile. Three, two, one, preach. Now we're ready to go. Now we're ready to go. You have no idea how glad I am that you clapped at that part. If you are anything like me, we struggle with what other people think of us. In fact, I probably should have introduced myself just by saying hi, my name is Chris.

I am a recovering approval addict. Fearing what people think is a trap. It's a snare. It's not to be taken lightly. It's not one of these things that we just think, well, everybody does it, everybody struggles with it. It's actually quite destructive. And we have to recognize it is not just a relational problem.

Everything that we've talked about in the last four weeks at its core, at its root, is a spiritual issue. As Pastor Craig said, becoming obsessed, I just want you to think about this in your life. When you become obsessed with what they, who are they, you know who they are, when you become obsessed with what they think, it is the fastest way to forget what God thinks about you. And know this. Right now, every person in this room, God has a very specific opinion. about each and every one of you.

It's the fastest way to forget what he says. So we have to have a different goal. We have to. We've got to pursue something different. Instead of living for the approval of them, whoever they are, we have to literally build our lives around living for God and God alone. Not just in theory, but in actuality.

We have to learn how to live for his will, for his purpose and for his glory, period. In fact, I love this passage. Paul wrote a letter to the Galatians in Galatians chapter 1, verse 10. And Paul wrote, obviously, I am not trying to win the approval of people, but God. Now, I want you to understand something for a second. The people in Galatia knew all of the things in Paul's life that gave credibility to his word obviously. Obviously, you've been imprisoned multiple times for your faith.

Obviously, you've been shipwrecked and left for dead. Obviously, you have been shunned by your entire former peer group who used to be the religious elite. Obviously, you aren't living for the approval of people, but the purpose of Christ. The challenge is, I don't think. I don't think it's quite so obvious for us. He says, obviously I'm not living for the approval of people, but God. And then he says one of the most humbling and sobering passages possibly in all the Bible. In verse 10, if pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ's servant. To be a servant means you place yourself under someone or something. And so if we are going to place ourselves under the approval of people, we can't then place ourselves under the approval of Christ.

You can put yourself under one or the other, but you cannot live for both. That's a harsh reality. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ's service. So can we have a little real talk today? Can we just have a little honest conversation about this? The truth is, is that we are drawn, just like the hook in the nose, to caring about what other people think of us. And today, I want to talk about two facts that we find in the disease to please. Two facts about the disease to please.

Number one, as much as we do not want to admit this, pleasing people is a form of idolatry. Is that a gut punch enough for you tonight? Pleasing people is a form of idolatry. Last week, Craig talked about, I believe it's 613 Levittical laws that the Israelites, the people of God, had to aspire to live by. Well, those 613 rules started with 10. And of the 10 commandments, there was the first commandments. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

So some of you are listening to this, you're like, I'm good. I don't have like figurines that I bowed down to in my living room. I'm like, no Buddhas or anything like that. I'm like, I'm good. This is not applicable to me. What is idolatry? What is putting something above God? It is thinking about pursuing, spending more time, chasing after anything more than you chase after God.

That is idolatry. And all through the Bible, we see this idea that God is a jealous God. What does that mean? That means that he wants to be the sole purpose, the sole source of your identity, your heart, your affection, your thoughts, and anything else that we place before him, he becomes jealous. of what gets your attention and what gets mine. It is idolatry. In fact, Jesus spoke of this in the gospel of John chapter 12, verse 42.

So in three and a half years of his public ministry, I understand that Jesus, like, literally took blind people and spoke to them, made mud, whatever he happened to do, and now they're seeing. He took people who were lame. They could not walk. And by his word and by his power, miracle. They're walking.

People that had leprosy cleansed them like that. Dead people breathing life into people that are literally dead. And it wasn't just his followers that saw this. There was a group of religious leaders known as the Pharisees that were also eyewitnesses, yet refused to publicly acknowledge faith that he is the Christ. In fact, Jesus described their idolatry this way. He says, because this is in verse 42, or yeah, verse 42 of John 12, because of the Pharisees, they would not openly acknowledge their faith.

Why? For fear they'd be put out of the synagogue. Listen to this. For they loved human praise more than praise from God. it's idolatry. Anytime you love anything more than your creator, it's idolatry. And it doesn't always start with the big stuff, right? It often starts with little seemingly innocent and noculus little things that you try to do to please someone else.

In fact, I remember growing up South Texas, I was in high school in the mid to late 1980s. And I'm going to tell you, in this era, it was like the glory years of music and TV shows. Like, you had bands like The Cure and like Depeche Mode and Def Leopard, people. Come on. Deaf leopard! Anyway, maybe just me. Television. So we were just kind of easing out of the Love Boat Fantasy Island.

And then, like, edgy shows started coming out like Magnum P.I. mustache, Tom Seleck, Dallas, who shot JR. Most of you're saying, who the heck's J.R., right? And then there was this one show that was like my show. You had these two vice cops in southern Florida. People, Crock and a Tubb, single-handedly, took on the drug trade from Cuba, and they looked darn good in the process. And because of my culture and my obsession with Miami Vice,

I may or may not have walked into sophomore English dressed like this. Take it in, people. Just take it in. Couple thoughts. If you wonder why my hair is so short all the time now, now you know why. That was about a year after my mother gave me a perm. But, you know, we do little stuff. Like it just starts with little stuff like, don't I look cool?

No, you look like an idiot. But then it's like, well, I laughed at the joke that I probably should not have laughed at. And I told the lie to kind of say face. I maybe told a slight exaggeration to make myself look better. There was an opportunity to share my faith, and I feel just weird about that whole thing. So I'm just going to let that opportunity pass maybe the next time. And on and on and on seemingly. moments of choosing your behavior based on what they, whoever they is, are going to think of you.

Please hear me. Not only is this idolatry, but it hurts the heart of God because we care about them more than we care about him. Pleasing people is a form of idolatry, but tell you what, I've got really good news. And this is the second thought about the disease to please. The good news is that the approval of God sets us free from the disease to please once and for all. His approval, his thought of you is the key that liberates you from this bondage, this prison of other people's thoughts. Paul said it in 1st Thessalonians 2.

He says, on the contrary, we speak. as those approved by God. The words that are coming out of our mouth, they're laced with this vocabulary that helps you to know that I'm enough. I've been approved by God, and my words and my life bear testimony that I'm enough in God's eyes.

He says, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please, people, but God, because it's him who tests our hearts. We weren't looking for praise from people, not you nor anyone else. Church, just think about how freeing this could be for you. How liberating it could be just to let that get into your spirit, into your heart. We cannot please everyone, no matter how hard we try. You please one group, this group will be disappointed in you. You get everything right to plead this group. They've now changed their mind.

and you're no longer pleasing that group. It's impossible. We cannot please everyone, but we can please God it because what Christ has done for us, we are forgiven, and we can be absolutely changed. If you think about it,

your worth is based purely on one thing, and it has nothing. thing to do with your neighbors or your family or your coworkers. And if I'm honest, I've been a follower of Jesus for 28 years. I've been a pastor for 25 and a half years. And I've come to the belief that every chronic sin struggle that exists in this room has a singular cause, a singular source.

Somewhere along the lines, you and I bought a lie. We bought a lie. And that lie creates this emptiness inside of us that somehow we have to medicate. For me, I think back, and I know a lot of you know my story, some of you may not. growing up there was not a whole lot of i'm proud of yous from my father i had this this whole inside of me of um dad please um give me something to hang my hat on you've got what it takes chris i just didn't

get that stuff and so where else do you go church you go out here and out here and out here and here because if he didn't think maybe maybe they will right and um i'll be honest with you um i got into ministry i felt called to ministry when i was uh 21 and ministry is a dangerous place for people that have insecurity because there is ample opportunity for you guys to like me it's dangerous it's toxic and i'll be honest it took me out it got to a point about 17 and a half years ago where my obsession with the affirmation of other people led to even the pursuit of women outside of my own marriage. Just notice me.

Just think I'm worth your respect. Think I'm attractive. It all has the same source. I have the hole inside of my heart and I'm desperate for anybody to say, that I'm enough. And it'll never, it'll never satisfy. So I'm at this point in my life

where my sins have found me out. And I'm on the phone with Craig and I'm confessing everything to Cindy. I'd broken our marriage vows and I'm about to resign my position at Life Church. And it seemed like that the disease to please, which was rooted in a lie that I had previously and for my entire life believed, which is I'm a failure and everyone knows it,

that it cost me absolutely everything. And the church kind of rallied around us in a pretty remarkable way. Tough love, walked us through some of the darkest days of my life. And I'll just tell you, one of the reasons I'm so passionate about spitting my entire life in this place is not because of all of the changed lives that I see. part of it. It's partly because and primarily because I am one of the changed lives. My marriage wouldn't be what it is had God in the context of this place not reached down and said, I have more for you, Chris. This is not the life that my son died to give you. And I was sitting with one of my

mentors way back then, and he put a bookmark in my hands, and it was this one. And he says, Chris, I want you every day to read and speak God's word over your life every day. I said, okay. I said, I read the Bible all the time. I said, no, no, no. He said, I want you to speak it. You see, church, when you read to yourself the Bible, it edifies the soul. It builds your spirit. When you speak the word of God over your life, now that's an act of warfare. That's an act of war. Because when you look at the armor of God, right, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the belt of truth, all the armor of God is defensive. It is to protect you with the exception of one. And it is the word of God. And the word of God is the sword of the spirit.

And it is the only offensive weapon that we've been given in our faith. And so he said, I want you to speak God's word over your life. And so this bookmark, there's like 32 scriptures. They're called the I am statements. They're the passages that say, this is who I am in Christ. And I'm out of ministry. I'm selling lumber. I'm a manager at a home improvement store.

And at 5.45 every morning, I'm sitting in my little car. and I pull this out and I just start speaking it out. I am God's child. I am Christ's friend. I have been justified. I'm united with God. We are one in spirit. I'm a member of Christ's body.

I'm a saint. I've been adopted as God's child and on and on and on. And in the first day is great, but nothing changed. First week, nothing. First month, nothing. About a year into this, You know what God's words is? Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the what?

So what am I doing, church? I'm just replacing the lies with the truth. Takes a minute. And I distinctly remember, like, I don't have moments very often where I, like, hear God, like, hear him. And I didn't hear him this day either, but I heard him. I'm helping this guy load a bunch of plywood. And this overwhelming moment came. And I felt the Lord just say, Chris, I love you.

And I'm like, that's nice. High five. Love you too, God. Great. And he just kind of brushed it away. And it came a little bit more powerfully. No, Chris, I love you. And in that moment, what I had known,

ever since I became a believer in Jesus, it took an 18-inch journey into my heart. And at that moment, I knew I'm enough. I'm enough. There's nothing I could do to make God love me any more than he does in this moment. Nothing. I'm enough. And so let me get up into your business for a minute today.

There are lies that need to be replaced with truth. And you have to kind of let that get into you and what you will discover when you allow the power of the sword of the sword God's word over your life, to wash over you, to let it overcome you, it will liberate you from the need to live for the approval of anyone because you know that you are already enough in Christ. There is nothing that you could do to make him love you more or any less today, not because you're good, but because Jesus died and when God views you, if you are in Christ, He's viewing you through the lens of grace. He's viewing you through the lens of sacrifice by the perfect son of God.

So who are you? You are the workmanship of God in Jesus Christ. Prepared and advanced for God to do through your life. You are an adopted child of God. You are blessed when you go in and you are blessed when you go out. The Bible says that the promises of God are yes and amen for those in Christ Jesus. you are forgiven of your sins if you know Jesus. The Bible says that you are no longer a prisoner,

but you are an overcomer by the blood of the land and by the words of our story. Can somebody give God a little bit of praise for the truth that he gives us? You are not what you think, they think about you. You are only what God says about you. That's it. That's the only thing that matters.

and when you let that penetrate your heart, then you're like, I'm going to step into the conflict. I'm just going to step into it. I don't, I'm not afraid of what people think. Because I'm his, I am not going to obsess with their opinions. I'm going to keep driving the crappy car because I do not care what they think. I care about being debt free and honoring God in my finances.

It's like we start making different decisions because we know who we are and what we're worth. Because I'm accepted, church, no one can steal my joy, no one can rob me of my purpose, and no one can take away who I am and whose I am. We need this. Every sin struggle, I believe, starts with a lie that we've believed.

And it is the power of the God's word that liberates us from the disease to please. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the fear of man, it's a snare, it's a trap, and a bunch of us are stuck in it. But whoever trusts in the Lord will be kept safe. I believe God's going to work in a lot of our hearts today at all of our locations.

Can we just go to him in prayer today? Father, we thank you for your goodness. We thank you, God, that you come after. us with such ferocity and aggression. God, you long so much for us to live a life of freedom, but the truth is many of us are in prison. God, I pray that we would be set free by the power of your word. As we're in an attitude of prayer, there are some of you in this place, and I suspect it's many of us. If you're honest, you're like, I, my life is way to define by acting in such a way, by making decisions in such a way to get approval from people and disregarding what God

thinks about me. And that stops today. God set me free from this disease to please. If that's your prayer today, would you just boldly raise your hand all over the place? Hands going up everywhere. Father, I thank you for people that are hearing God from your Holy Spirit. Lord, I pray that later today, tomorrow, later this week, God, that you would renew our minds with the truth about who we are in Christ. God, I thank you, God, for what this moment is going to look like and the ripple effect in families and generations because of this step to say, I'm going to let your approval define my worth.

God, thank you for who you are and what you're doing. doing. As we continue to pray, all of those truths that I read, they're only true of people who have fully surrendered their lives to Christ. And I need you to understand something. There is really bad news. And the bad news is that everyone has sinned and fallen short of the standard of God. That means all of us. And the penalty of that sin is eternal separational. from God in a literal place called hell. That is bad news. But the good news is not an idea.

It is not an ideology. The good news is a person because while we were in our sin predicament, God sent his one and only son, Jesus, who lived a sinless life to dine across to pay for our sin. But listen to me, church, it is not enough to just intellectually believe in God. you have to receive what Christ did for you. To as many as have received Christ, the Bible says. To them, he gives the right to be called a child of God,

even to those who believe in his name. There are some of you that are about to pray a prayer that these truths are going to now become true of you. What do you do? You just call on his name. You confess that you've sin. you ask him to save you and forgive you. And so at all of our locations right now, those you're saying, you know what, I don't know

that he's first in my life. And today I'm taking this step of faith to say, God, forgive me and save me. Just boldly at your hand right now. Just lift it up right where you are. But I got you right here, right over here. I see you as well. Keep it up for just a second so I can see you. God loves you.

You are not the lies that we've believed. I got you right over here as well. Over here in the back. Others of you, keep it up for just a second. So proud of you. Who else did I miss? church can we just stand up together as we pray in just an attitude of unity with every person taking this step to put their faith in Jesus every voice praying with me father i need you

i've sinned i'm asking you to save me jesus i believe you died to pay for my sin and you rose from the grave to bring me life filling down with your holy spirit that i could serve you all always, in Jesus' name I pray. Can somebody give God a little praise in this place today? You know, as a church, it's always our heart and our hope to see you continue to grow in your relationship with Christ, and we have a great resource to help you do that. It's called life. com church slash next. There you can find all kinds of resources to help you take your next steps in your relationship with Christ. Again, thanks for joining us here at Life Church. We'll see you next time.