People-Pleasing and Idolizing People
Do you get tripped up by people-pleasing (fearing them or putting all your trust in them)? Jeremiah 17:5-6 warns against this people pleasing. Look at verse 5b, “Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans, who rely on human strength and turn their hearts away from the Lord.” Relying on people for our hope will turn our hearts away from the Lord. While we do need people, we don’t want to put all our hope in them.
The Israelites trusted in human strength and suffered during the attacks of the Babylonians, as Jeremiah alluded to in verse 5. The next verse (6) explains how hopeless this people-pleasing made the Israelites: “They are like stunted shrubs in the desert, with no hope for the future. They will live in the barren wilderness in an uninhabited salty land.” In an agrarian culture, salty lands were a bane, because the salt prevented the land from bearing the crops essential for the life of Israelite farmers. Often we do not realize that the hope we place in people is pulling us from the Lord until we see our lives are as hopeless and stunted as these shrubs.
Yet when we put our hope in the Lord, we are fruitful. The next 2 verses (7-8) of Jeremiah 17 show the opposite of that cursed people-pleasing life: “But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green and they never stop producing fruit.” What a contrast we see between the stunted shrubs in the salty land and these trees that are green and covered in fruit.
Often Scripture, such as Proverbs, uses this technique of contrasting two different things, and Jeremiah uses this technique again in the next pair of verses (9-10). Verse 9 speaks of the problem with humans and says: “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is.” Jeremiah is again presenting the problem first, in this case the entire human heart. But then he points to God’s power in verse 10: “But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.”
These four verses warn us that we cannot trust our fleshly heart. It is wicked and deceives us. We also cannot put our trust in people to save us. Only the Lord can do that. But people-pleasing is subtle. We may feel we need others to validate us, or confirm our worth. We may feel lonely and want people to comfort us and spend time with us, to the exclusion of spending time with the Lord. Since people need companionship and some affirmation from others, we may not realize we have come to rely heavily on others instead of seeking God’s approval, affirmation, comfort and friendship. When we let ourselves need and fear others, we forget how much God wants to fill that yearning. People cannot fill the awful void in our hearts, so like a hungry person who keeps eating cotton candy, we keep seeking approval and companionship from people who cannot fill us.
People can do so much for us, but they cannot really fill us as God can. In a vicious cycle, we keep seeking people to bring us comfort and hope, but they let us down. Even kind people, Christians, will let us down when we demand more than they can give. Perhaps they will be weary and stop giving, or they will be busy and not always be available. They may often affirm us but have bad days and stop. But God is always available to reassure us of his love. Like those lush trees planted by the river, when we rely on Him, he never lets us down. He will not hate us or stop forgiving us. His wisdom is always correct. He is always trustworthy.
But might we think God has let us down? Yes, and this is why Jeremiah said the heart is so deceitful and wicked. Our own thoughts may lie to us. This is why we need to bring our thoughts and feelings to the Lord. He can search our hearts and examine any secret motives. Confirming this same idea Jeremiah expressed about God searching our hearts, King David wrote in Psalm 139: 23-24, “Search me, oh Lord, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you and lead me in the way of everlasting life.” Jeremiah knew his Scripture and repeated many things King David said. But we do not trust Jeremiah, because he knew the Scripture. We trust him because he accurately spoke God’s word, as even Jeremiah testified in Jer.26:12b, “The Lord gave me every word that I have spoken.”
We must be grounded in God’s word and his heart. We must put our full hope and trust in God, because we can only rely on him. The more we tell God our hurt, sorrow, anger and fear and any other strong feelings, the more God can comfort and love us. Spending quiet time with God is not a mindless discipline of slaves obeying a harsh master. We develop a trusting friendship with God during the time we spend alone with him, as we read his word and tell him all of our feelings and thoughts.
If we are completely vulnerable with God and trust him in childlike faith, God will befriend us. Jesus confirmed this when he said, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you,” (John 15:15.) We may still be tempted to fear or please others if we have suffered under that fear for many years. But God can heal us over time.
I will share more about this wonderful concept of being healed from “the fear of people” (people pleasing) in a future post. Thanks for joining us in this post. If you have any stories about how God is working on your heart, please let us know. May the Lord bless you this week!