A or B

Do I want to please people, or do I want to glorify God?

I'm realizing it's an important question to ask myself. And that what accomplishes one usually has the opposite effect on the other. Perhaps sometimes you might be able to swing both. But I think more often than not, the two are mutually exclusive. Causing us  to really ask ourselves...do I want to please people, or do I want to glorify God?

And not just before making small day to day choices. But before the big decisions. And most importantly, as a lifestyle.

What if you have to choose? What if you've hit a fork in the road and you realize you can no longer hop back and forth between both sides? That you can't just continue straddling the dividing line anymore. One foot over here. One over there. What if you've reached the point in life where the only remaining option is to fully commit to one or the other? Before they were similar enough that you could pull off the facade of doing both. But now they've gotten more seriously selective. Diverging from each other. Becoming two distinct worlds. Leaving you with the option of A or B. Nothing in between. No combo meal. No best of both worlds. No half-assing two different lifestyles.

A or B.

Pleasing people or glorifying God.

Totally distinct. Opposite directions. Different realities of who you will be, what you will do, and what type of life you will live. All you can do...the only option you have left...is to choose.

A or B.

It seems easy enough, right? Of course glorifying God is more important than pleasing people. You're certain of it. Your heart, mind and spirit know it.

And yet the stakes of choosing to do so are just so high. So terrifyingly high.

Especially if you are a people pleaser. If you've been wearing that mask for years, making your life decisions on the sole basis of how it will affect those around you. How happy they'll be. How well they'll like and approve of you. To the extent that you can't even tell where the mask ends and your face begins. What parts of you are fake, and what parts of you are actually flesh. You've been doing it so long that it looks like the real you. Feels like the real you. Are you people pleasing, or does what you genuinely desire just so happen to please others?

If that's the case, you probably can't even trust your own judgement, at least not in your current state. Not until you take some time to separate yourself from those people. Perhaps all people. To really search your heart for the true self.

It's scary to admit, but if you are to be totally honest with yourself (to the best of your current ability), that's the only way to know who you really are, what you really want, and what of the choices in front of you will glorify God rather than please people. Those things just get too clouded by the people and their demands, desires, opinions and praises.

And when you've been living under that cloud for long enough, it simply looks like the sky. You can't even realize its polluted state. To you, it's pure sky.

You need silence...to be away from the noise.

You need stillness...to stop the running.

You need emptiness...to step away from the striving.

You may even need to escape entirely. You must if the noise, the running, and the striving are too tempting in your current environment.

You need a place conducive to silence, stillness and emptiness. Soul searching, prayer and meditation. True-self discovery and divine encounter. You're never unreachable for God. But you may be too stuck in the noise, caught up in the running and obsessed with the striving to hear Him. He'll never stop trying, but it's on us to get the clutter out of our lives so that we can notice Him.

Maybe you can't decipher A from B. Maybe you're confused entirely, because as soon as you start to peel off a corner of that mask, you feel vulnerable and let it mold back on. Or  maybe you're just so deep in people pleasing that you don't even notice a mask. Because when you look in the mirror, all you see is yourself. And maybe you already know which path pleases people and which glorifies God.

But even if you've distinguished A from B, if you're a people pleaser, it won't be easy to choose the latter.

Because it's hard to seek God's face and will when you can't even identify your own.