By Anne Anjao-Eboi
It takes Godly maturity for one to realise that pleasing fellow human beings is one endless and energy consuming venture. No matter what you do, people are never really pleased. Those who genuinely care for you can't even number ten people.
A friend once told me: "You need not defend yourself. Those who love you don’t need your defence and those who don’t love you don’t need your defence either. In fact, the more you defend yourself, the more your enemies gather ammunition against you."
We form friends left, right and centre and we value those friendships. Girls will gather for sleepovers while boys prefer outdoors. With time, however, we realise our immense differences and slowly our number of friends dwindles.
If we are not careful, we may begin to put people above God and that is where our tribulations begin. We have been instructed to serve God with all our heart, body, mind and soul: and not to have any other gods before Him.
For instance, your church is calling for prayer and fasting this coming weekend. Damn it! You think. This weekend is my best friend’s farewell party. How can I arrive at this fun-filled party and salivate all the way? So what do you do? You decide God can wait until another fast is called. Hopefully, there will be no social function then.
Or you really love attending the annual ‘Africa Lets Worship’ concert and it is coming this weekend, but your boyfriend says he doesn’t feel like it. Instead, he wants you to spend a quiet evening at home. Well, you have never missed the concert but since you met this guy less than a year ago, he is driving you crazy and so a quiet evening it is.
Total surrender
God demands our total surrender. He says He will not share His glory with another. God also says the human heart is desperately wicked. That is why we need to stay close to Him. People will always disappoint.
Most people will befriend you based on what they can benefit from you, but God only desires that we lead lives that please Him.
How do we please God? Simple. Do His will. And what is His will? Worship Him alone, read and meditate on His word, pray, sing, spread His word, do good to others and take care of orphans and widows.
Determine to be a God chaser this year. Happy New Year.
