Are you tired of wondering how to please God?
Some of us have a strong need to please. Particularly, many who grow up in a religious household or fundamental church spend a lifetime trying to figure how to please God. Sometimes our obsession with pleasing God also becomes a dysfunctional desire to always please others. But we’ll expand on “Being a people pleaser” in another article. For now, let’s explore how seeking to please God can lead to damaged relationships, broken hearts, or perhaps–true love!
When you’re in an environment that constantly emphasizes being “right” with God, it can get depressing to realize how impossible it is to follow God’s strict rules and regulations.
Can you relate?
What crazy person came up with the bizarre idea that it’s even remotely possible to please God? I can’t please my husband, my children, my parents–much less the “ruler of heaven and earth.”
This is not working, I’m giving up on God’s love
Jarringly, we wake up and finally realize our efforts are in vain. It becomes clear that God’s supernatural power isn’t conveniently possessing us to be robotically good. Divine power hasn’t enlightened us to become perfect followers of Christ or Muhammed or Buddha.
As a result, this is the point at which many completely reject a higher power or ‘perfect being’ altogether. However, some might actually choose to double down and reinvent their God or spiritual leader.
Which road do you choose?
On this site, we have a lot to say about the human need to feel loved. Let us consider that maybe our desire to figure out how to please God is really just a reflection of our longing to feel loved.
Through the lens of my own innate desire to be loved, I’ve recently contemplated the impact my quest to please God has had on my love life. In short, despite the rocky road, my question of ‘how to please God’ finally led me to answers about true love.
How my quest to please God shaped my relationship to self and others
I constantly judged myself, and felt unloved in the process
Our childhood innocence is lost when we’re first brainwashed into believing we can and must earn love–in our relationship to God and in our relationship to self and others.
Unfortunately, our inability to please God, inevitably leads us to harshly judge the world around us.
When we believe God is not pleased with us, it’s so easy to start picking ourselves apart.
We ask ourselves questions like, “Why am I never good enough? Why did God create me this way? Will I ever measure up?” These ponderings completely shut us off to true love. We start to believe that if we don’t measure up, no one will ever love us.
Fact is though, love stories have nothing to do with how to please a potential partner, and everything to do with finally being accepted just as we are. But first, we have to accept ourselves as we are.
When we can’t please God, we aren’t pleased with ourselves. This results in judging ourselves and others, thereby closing the door to love.
Judging others is the ugly stepchild of inferiority
Unfortunately, it took me a long time to connect the dots on how my self-rejection led me to judge others. Judging isn’t always easy to identify. I didn’t judge others based on who they were. I judged them based on who I was not.
For example, my thinking went something like this:
- If I’m not enough, why are they so happy being imperfect?
- Why am I over here working so hard to be loved, while love just seems to fall into their lap?
- How can they be so confident that God won’t strike them dead for their indifference?
- If they are so oblivious to pleasing God, why am I over here suffering for Jesus?
I wasn’t really mad at them. I was angry with myself for never solving the equation of how to please God.
It hurt me that I’d never felt loved, by God or them.
Judging others is counterintuitive to love
These ideas may seem foreign to those who did not grew up with a strict religious background. But please believe me when I say that judging others is a reflection of how we judge ourselves. Negative judgments are always counterintuitive to love. Despite my best intentions, seeking to please others with the hope of earning love was futile.
Finally, I began to see the pattern, but had fallen hopeless to figuring it out all on my own.
The experience of true love obliterates our need to please
Fortunately, after many painful setbacks, I finally threw up my hands in surrender to never pleasing God. I simply started praying for what I’d wanted all along.
“God, I just want to feel loved.”
I remember the day I confessed my need for love out loud to my higher power. I was on the treadmill, and it felt weird to hear those words tumble out of my mouth. It was like, “God, take it or leave it. I don’t care about earning your love anymore. I just want love.”
When I took my nightly walks after that, I kept repeating my raw desire for love. But of course, I’m human. My preference was for the human embodiment of love (this gets tricky and is another story for another time).
And I kid you not, it seemed like no time had passed before love mysteriously fell into my lap, just like it seemed to have happened for everyone else. Perhaps I’d just not seen their private struggle of inadequacy. It’s likely they too had wrestled the demons of feeling like they’d never be enough, until one day they just gave up on trying.
Conclusion
Finally, I opened the door to true love by accepting myself as I was. And once I experienced that unconditional love, my life was never the same again. Someone else finally loved me for me. I could have “given my body to be burned,” but God only cared about love. I’d finally learned how to please God and, in the process, true love found me.
Read more articles on spiritual love!
LoveLifeLinks.com believes you’ll finally please God by surrendering to true love.
Remember, you can feel love anywhere, anytime, all the time.
SMiLes Dear Anna Hehe After A Somewhat ‘Hypomanic’ Yet Still effortless in Ease Now
Balance New of 17,899 Miles of Public Dance And 11.4 MiLLioN Words of EPiC Long Form
Poem So Fully iLLusTRaTeD With Around 130,000 Photos And 10,000 or So YouTube
Videos to Accompany All Those Free Verse Long Form Poem Words in the Same
9 Years And 6 Months of Effort As True There Are No ‘Sistine Chapel
Ceilings’ to Paint Fresh Art on WHeRE i Am From WHeRE
At Least i Surely Wouldn’t Be ALLoWeD to Do That
With mY Style of Painting Hehe For the
All in All Deepest in me Perhaps
It is Different For Say
Someone Like me in the
Dead Zone For 66 Months
to Find Balance Yet WHeRE i Continue
To Be i Am Now So Deep Within A Balance
WHeRE my Finger Tips Continue to Become
The Weight of my Body With Twinkle Toes too in
A Flow of Both Meditating Free Dance And Song
Is An Answer for Peace Within in Balance Enough
With No Fear to Sail Peacefully NoW iN LoVE
Through All the Waves Lower And or Higher
Newly Now Life Brings Hehe my Psychiatrist
Says Yes He Wishes More Folks He
Sees And Listens to Could
Find This Kind
of Balance i
Bring As He Doesn’t
Mind Checking His Blood
Pressure When i am Present Quarterly As Such
As Yes i am the One Person That Doesn’t Make
His Now Growing Older Middle Age Blood Pressure Go Up…
Even More… God Yes LoVE iN Peace
And This Is Life mY FRiEnD For me
And Looking All Around At Nature
And Feeling And Sensing All Around
Within This Seems to Be Key the Peace
Without Fear the iNHaLinG Peace EXHaLinG
Love That Finger Tips Twinkle Toes in Balance
With Weight of Body Do Bring at Least For me Yet
Truly As ‘They’ Relate Different Love Languages
Surely A Flavor of Heaven on Earth Within May
Be Somewhat Different For Everyone And
For That Matter Purgatory or Hell on Earth
Too As my Kind of Heaven Would
Surely Be A Nightmare for
my Very Introverted
Reserved And
Shy Wife as We
Celebrate 33 Years
of Marriage Today on
‘Fat Tuesday’ With Her
53rd Birthday Still to Come on
Easter Sunday A Key to Our Success
is i Accept Her Differences so ‘Polar’ Opposite
From me And She Accepts mine too in Every Way
too No Need For Secrets ThiS Way As i Have No
Secrets to Keep From the Great Within Either
With SMiles mY FRiEnD True i Could Go
On Forever Dancing And Singing
Love Free Forever Now New
Indeed This Is What the
Wind Does Flows
Over all Boundaries
And Creates A Force of
Water to Overcome All Obstacles in Ease
Of Course the Key is Threading The Halls of
Sanity Making TWiLiGHT Our Home Forever New Now…
Yet Really
only in
my one
Unique View
Yes It’s True We All View Do Our
UNiVeRSES Differently And in ThiS
Way Ironically We aRe All ‘Only
Sons and or Daughters’ of
God For Real The
Great All In All
Just MaKinG
Our Way Within
At Best to me Finding
Best LoVE iN Peace
Now to Co-Create
With All in All
For Real
With SMiLes…
Fortunately i am Able
to Shine my LiGHT
Without Blinding
myself with
Dark as
You Surely Understand
Parts of WHeRE i Come
From Dear Anna With SMiLes..:)
I know the massive effort it takes to assemble art and you’ve certainly put together many unique perspectives, one running life thought, a masterpiece to those who also see through your eyes or seek to see and experience something beyond the mundane. Whether it be the Sistine Chapel or not, we are lucky to know the extremes, to experience more fully the peace we gain once finding balance. I miss the enchantment and inspiration that comes as a result of drug-like disease, but it is better than living constantly on the edge of death. A change of seasons brings hypomania which is both exhilarating and frightening. I like your story and relate to the soul of it’s expression. “Normal” people can be so boring, but maybe that is their own cross to bear. 🙂 Some can’t help but be brave, because they can’t unsee the full experience of life–from torture to treasure. I write for the search engine now. I used to write to find myself. Now I write so others can find me. Boring except for the hope of financial reward–Maslows hierarchy that explains why I can’t just sit on the beach with the likes of you and sip other worlds. Thank you for visiting and sharing. Happy birthday to your whole other half! I am an introvert as well, even though by function of my employment I have to fake otherwise.
iNDeeD Dear Anna Our Reality to Survive Often Requires
Us to Wear Masks to Survive And Surely Please Target
Audiences The Same to Continue to Generate
Revenue to Do the Same Whether Free
Lance Or Working for An
Employer As Such Hehe
There is Realistically No Way i Could
Do What i Do Now or Be Free to Be me if
i Had the Kind of Job Before Then Where All that
Was Left of me at the End of the Day That Was Still
Always On Call Was to Do Something Totally Mindless Yes
That Required Neither Analytical Thought or A Deeper Flow
of Creativity Than Just A TV Show or Perhaps A Video Game
That Didn’t Go Anywhere at All or Oh Dear my Father’s Nightmare
i Saw of Him in Law Enforcement 46 Years Just Watching Cars
Go ‘Round and ‘Round A Track And Selling ‘NASCAR’ Stuff at
A Flea Market Ingrained into the Same Routine Till the Day
He Dropped Dead Just Casually Telling my Cousin He
Didn’t Think He Was Gonna Make it At And That Was
It Suddenly No “NASCAR” Stuff Left to Sell at
The Flea Market Yet It’s True It Got Him
Him Through The Friction of Each Day
of Retirement for 12 Years including Buying
500 Dollars of Lottery Tickets Each Week His Golden
Age Flavor Then Yes That Worked Okay For Him
As His 4th Marriage Died Early Shortly After
She Retired Which Left Him Buying New
Packages of Clothes to Hell
With Washing Old Ones
As He Had Enough
Money to Do
Whatever
the Hell He Wanted
to Do SMiLes i Gave up
A Quarter of A Century to the
Same Federal Employer And toward
the Last 5 years of 5 Job Changes and
Temporary Promotions Then During New
Federal Reductions in Force That Ironically
Doubled my Pay For my ‘High 3 Years’ For
Early Retirement As They Were
Doing Their Best
to Keep What
They Called me
a ‘Valuable Commodity’
For Information Technology
And Financial Management although
That Really Did Not Have much to Do
With the Positions i was Promoted For
Never the Less Eventually After i Recovered
Out of 19 Work Related Stress Disorders Free
To Wear Whatever Wings i care to Fly With
Now Whereas Before Was A Perfect Storm
of Hell Now is the Same of Heaven on
Earth Within As All the Pieces
Fell Back together
For Humpty
Dumpty
Hehe For Real
Just Like The Inheritance
of the Super Systemizing
Asperger’s Syndrome from
my Father’s Side And Thank God Opposites
Do Attract For the Fair Skin And Voted Best
Figure in 11th And 12th Grade my Mother and
Her Eventual Publishing Poet Way in Creativity
(6th Anniversary of Her Death Today on 2.22.23)
While Like Many Folks on Her Side of the Family
With Bi-Polar Spectrum Related Challenges She
Somewhat Struggled to Thread Her Halls Of Life
Sadly Addicted to Right Wing Evangelistic Politics
On TV As i’ve Seen So Many Elders More Subject
to the ‘Power of Suggestions’ Fall to Whatever is
Spoon Fed to them
Whether Fear, Anger,
And Hate of ‘the other’
Disseminated By the
Church or On the Poison
of The Radio and TV i’ve even
Seen it Happen to Folks With Advanced
Degrees Recently Using the Oddest Kinds of ‘Rational
Justification’ For What is Brain Washed of Them For Real
Fortunately For me i Can Do iRobot of Logic on The Flip
of A Dime as Easy As Creativity Now it Was the Creativity
That i Struggled to Do For 53 Years And it Was the ‘iRobot’
That Took So Many Colors of Life Away So in my Case
Both So-called Disorders Balance Each Other
Out As Only Gift NoW As Long as i am
The Captain of my Ship
Fair Winds and Following
Seas Through Higher and Lower
Waves of Storms of Life So Far in
9 Years And 6 Months For How i Sail
my Ship With Anchors of Asperger’s
Syndrome and Smooth Sails of the Bi-Polar
Spectrum More Aligned With the Hyperthymic
Personality of my Mother That Usually is More
Magnetic to Others Than Polarizing in Person at least
Hehe as i’ve learned to Wear A Mask of Small Talk
And Southern ‘Drawl’ HAha When Necessary
to Fit in Warmly Enough Not to Blow
Anyone’s Mind too Much
For What They
Aren’t Quite
Ready New to
Experience yet
And of Course there
is an On and Off Button
For me Online With Smiles hehe…
My Mother Did Not Fall into the Dungeon
She Stayed Unusually Happy Just to Breathe
Yet Oh Dear Lord the Power of Suggestion Drove Her
Wherever Those Folks Who Manipulate Others in Church
And On TV
And Radio
Wanted Her to
Go Just no Escaping
That Anyone Else
Could Bring to Her
Sadly Making Money
off of Older Folks ThiS Way oF Lies…
A Way of Life That Sadly is Still Spreading
in Pandemic Ways As Long AS Humans
Have Been Followers of Whatever
Stories That Come Their Way…
i Write, Direct And Play
my Own Story For Real
Yet i am only Human too…
i Suppose if i Had Not Have
Developed This Ability i Too
Would Be Following Someone
Else’s Story And Perhaps Just
A Spectator of Life Watching TV
or Still Playing the same Mindless
Snow Boarding Video Game Or Even
Watching Colorful Cars (Or Other Sports)
Race Round
And Round
A Track for
Hours Best Wishes
To You Dear FRiEnD
At Best We Do the Best
We can With the Challenges
At Hand And BLacK Abyss
Through Grey SHades
Through Even Potential
Beyond Rainbow Colors As Well
And ‘Traditionally’ New This is What
Bi-Polar Kinda Artists Bring Back For
Others to Feel and Sense in Other Avenues
of Life The BLacK Abyss of Hell and All the
New Colors of Heaven As It’s True So Many Folks
Are Basically in the
Tween of Grey
SHaDeS of
Purgatory
to Finish the
Wash, Rinse, Dry
Cycles of Every Day
As They Just Don’t have
the Resources to Buy ‘New
Clothes’ to Wear Every Day
That’s Another Part of my
‘Perfect Storm of Heaven’
my Wife Insists The Garbage
Can Must Be ‘3.33’ Inches from
The Curb She Says She Does it
All Better Than me And i Say Honey
Do Whatever You Wanna Do So She
Basically Does it All As that is Her Particular
Retirement
Gift and
Language
of Love
in Service
to Others
too Fortunately
Indeed Mostly me
Just another ‘Wendy’
Freeing the Wings of ‘Pan’ For Real
Yet in this Case hehe her name is Katrina
That means Pure and my Mother’s Name
Helen That Means Light Gifted With Such
A Radiant
SMiLe And
An Archetype
of The ‘Fair Mother’ Indeed…
my Father Rarely Broke a Smile
Yet He Rarely to Ever Expressed Fear
That Part i Finally Inherited From Him too…
The Part He Left With When i Was 3 Just
Leaving me With SMiLes And no Claws of
Fearless to Extend…
Oldest Story Ever
Told Beauty
And ‘the Beast’
Again mY FRiEnD..:)