Seeking God’s Approval Part III
Greetings. Welcome to my post. My hope and desire is that you will find these posts to be informative and helpful for you. Life is a journey filled with mountains and valleys in our relational life and in our personal life. Sometimes we can predict and make something happen. But sometimes we can never predict an event or relationship difficulty and we need to adjust and cope with these curve balls. At times life can be great but as you know, life can also be difficult and challenging.
In my last post, I spoke about the false strategy of using a mask in order to please God and others. If I can think of ways to wear a mask as a strategy to not let you see me for who I really am, then I will use this mask to keep up an appearance of looking good. Our Christian walk is to try to live up to a standard so that God loves me and others love me only based upon performing or living up to some standard. Your intentions are to make sure that God and others are pleased with you.
But deep down there is this cry inside of you in which you really do want to trust God and others with who you really are. It is almost like God has given you one face or identity and then we then make ourselves another one. We conclude this face is better than what God can create. And we create this face or mask because if someone really found out or discovered who I really am, they will not like me.
So like many others on the road of approval, we try with our might, our efforts, our intentions we can gain God’s pleasure and favor. But this walk and journey only leads to becoming tired and exhausting and our masks grow thin. We become weary of walking and discouraged in what we have found. And saddest of all, we have little confidence of God’s pleasure or delight. This Christian walk is not working and we know this, but we don’t know any different and all we know to do is to keep trying, keep going, and keep up the mask.
As a Christian and a Christian therapist, I can relate to these struggles. But for me, I have learned to take off this mask. But for you, maybe you have grown tired of trying to fake it. You are suspicious that others may be seeing the real you behind your mask despite your efforts to keep up the appearance. Thus you become a person in conflict: Do I dare let you in? What if I told you who I really am…will you accept me?
So what Christian therapy invites people to do is to find the courage to take off their mask and allow yourself to be truly known and cared for who you really are. Not for what you have been told to do or behave based upon the law, or rules, or church obedience in order to gain approval.
But the invitation is to take off your mask, enter the room of grace, and experience the freedom that come from being who you really are, and not what you have been told to do. It is time to be true and real and stop putting up the mask of faking and pleasing and allow me to empathize with your journey and find a way to give you permission to let go of the mask and return to who you really are. It is me helping you discover a God who loves you and really does want to say to you, He is well pleased with you. It is a God you can trust to be honest and vulnerable with and a God who is for you and not against you. It is time to be real and honest and take off the mask.
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