Seek the Approval of God, Not of Other People: A Sunday Devotional

John 5:41-47 “Your approval means nothing to me, ⁴² because I know you don’t have God’s love within you. ⁴³ For I have come to you in my Father’s name, and you have rejected me. Yet if others come in their own name, you gladly welcome them. ⁴⁴ No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honor each other, but you don’t care about the honor that comes from the one who alone is God.“Yet it isn’t I who will accuse you before the Father. Moses will accuse you! Yes, Moses, in whom you put your hopes. ⁴⁶ If you really believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me. ⁴⁷ But since you don’t believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?

It can be tiresome trying to win the approval of other people, because they can be so judgmental. We judge others without knowing their circumstances, hopes, dreams, aspirations, or the bad experiences they have endured in the past. This is particularly true for people who consider themselves Christians and measure others by their interpretation of the Scriptures. Yet, Luke 6:37 teaches Christians not to judge or condemn others and to forgive them.

Jesus told the Jewish leaders who were judging him for healing a man who had been ill for 38 years on the Sabbath. He reminded them that their approval did not matter to him, as they lacked the qualifications to judge him, particularly the love of God within them or the knowledge that Moses had written of Jesus. In Deuteronomy 18:15, Moses revealed that God would “raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.” Because the Jewish leaders failed to believe in Moses’ prophecy, they did not think that Jesus was the Messiah, even with the miracles and signs he performed.

Likewise, the people who want to judge you on your behaviors, looks, or faith are not qualified to give you or keep from you their approval. Only the Lord God knows us enough to give us His approval. He alone knows the intents of our hearts and the struggles we endure attempting to live a good life. He is the only one who has been with us before we were born until the present day.

Isaiah 46:3b-4 states, “I have cared for you since you were born. Yes, I carried you before you were born. ⁴ I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you.” The Lord God and His Son, Jesus, should be the audience we seek to please in our daily walk in the land of the living. As Jesus stated, you shouldn’t care about anyone else’s approval, because their judgment, built on faulty faith and beliefs, will not determine your eternal home.

Copyright ©
All posts on my blog, Help From Heaven, are my intellectual property protected by copyright. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express written permission from the author and/or owner of this blog is strictly prohibited.