Phil Baker has a link to a great article by Rob Bell. The article is basically a quote of one of the passages from Rob’s book, Velvet Elvis.
Here is another quote from my reading.
“I realize this is not groundbreaking news, but when we get desperate and realize we cannot keep living this way, then we have to change. As I let all this come spewing forth the first time in my therapist’s office, he interrupted me. I was making lists of all the people I was working to keep happy. He said it was clear that there were significant numbers of people I was working to please and that my issue was a simple one.
I was anticipating something quite profound as I got out my pen.
He said this: “Sin.”
And then he said, in what has become a pivotal moment in my journey, “Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.”
The relentless pursuit of who God made me to be.
I started identifying how much of my life was about making sure the right people were pleased with me. And as this became more and more clear, I realized how less and less pleased I was with myself. I’d become so heavily oriented around the expectations of others that I was becoming more and more like them and less and less the person God made me to be”
It reminds me of something the apostle said, “we are here to please God, not please people”.
and Hebrews 13.6 inspires me along similar lines.