Pleasing One, Persuading Many

One of life’s great pitfalls is the trap of living for the approval of others.
Most don’t realize when they’ve fallen into it until it starts to take a toll – when they’ve become emotionally exhausted or start losing their sense of purpose and identity.

At some point most people realize that living to please the crowd is a losing battle, yet many keep trying to win it.
Artists who attract crowds and followings even write songs about it.

In Taylor Swift’s 2020 song Mirrorball she relates how trying to entertain everyone and keep their attention has had a shattering effect on her, like a disco ball that reflects in so many directions:

I want you to know
I’m a mirrorball…
Shimmering beautiful
And when I break it’s in a million pieces

I can change everything about me to fit in

And they called off the circus
Burned the disco down
When they sent home the horses
And the rodeo clowns
I’m still on that tightrope
I’m still trying everything to get you laughing at me
I’m still a believer but I don’t know why
I’ve never been a natural
All I do is try, try, try
I’m still on that trapeze
I’m still trying everything
To keep you looking at me

Even knowing the dangers and experiencing the pitfalls of trying to please others, we still crave the affirmation – from friends, work, school, or social media. The desire to be accepted runs deep.
And social media will feed this craving.

Recently, Instagram announced the Instagram Plus subscription offering “more of what you love” to users so they can now quickly check not only if someone viewed their Instagram story – but how many times people rewatched their story.
So how can we keep ourselves from continually falling into this trap of people pleasing?

Is pleasing others our problem?

Not really. Pleasing in itself is a good thing and it’s healthy to want to be a blessing to others.
Those who we love and value, we naturally want to please.

Children want to please their parents.
Spouses want to please each other.
Employees want to please their employers.

Those who work for someone else know that they “serve at the pleasure” of their bosses. If your employer is not pleased with you or your work, it will be tough for you to keep your job.

At a young age, we learn by experience (some experiences more positive than others) what it means to please or displease our parents. We learn what gets the attention of others and what makes people laugh or adore us. And we tend to want more of it.

God has also wired some of us with personalities that love and derive much joy from serving and pleasing others.

But like with most things, the devil tries to take something that God designed for our good like pleasing others and twists it to be used against us. You can see this with marriage, with sex, with friendships, with serving others. Good things in us can become misguided.

2 Corinthians 11:14 shows us that:
“…Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”

You could have a genuine love and empathy for people that can become twisted into codependency if you begin to find your identity in the approval and pleasing of others.

Your desire to serve could be overdone and become a constant drive to keep others happy to the point where you experience guilt for even thinking of yourself.
Everything good that God designed also has boundaries.

Is pleasing yourself the answer?

Just like pleasing others is not the problem, pleasing yourself is not the answer.

Years ago, singer Ricky Nelson was invited to perform at a nostalgic concert of classic 50s and 60s rock artists at Madison Square Garden in New York. It was now the 70s and Ricky had a new band, a new look and a new country rock sound. After a short medley of some of his classic hits, he started playing his new stuff with the new band.

The crowd began to get restless because they wanted the old Ricky and at one point a fight broke out and fans started booing. By the end of the song Ricky walked off the stage, left the building and never returned for the finale.

He wrote about this experience in his song, Garden Party:
I went to a garden party
To reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories
And play our songs again

I played them all the old songs
I thought that’s why they came
No one heard the music
We didn’t look the same

I said hello to “Mary Lou”
She belongs to me
When I sang a song about a honky-tonk
It was time to leave

But it’s all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see, you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself

A very reflective song and on the surface, it sounds pretty good!

I think we can all hear well-meaning people in our lives saying things like:
“Don’t try to please everybody, just be true to yourself.”

“Don’t worry about what anyone thinks, just do what pleases you.” (That’s often how you end up making bad decisions and maybe getting a few too many tattoos.)

Or my favorite:
“You be you!” or “You do you!”

All these thoughts have a ring of truth to them but ultimately, they also lead us into a trap because even we don’t have what it takes to truly please ourselves.
Living to please ourselves never ends well either.

Becoming a God-Pleaser

It’s only when we are found in Christ that we experience true freedom from the trap of people-pleasing and the pleasing of self. And in Christ we discover that we now live to please God.

2 Corinthians 5:15 says:
“He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.”

How liberating is it to recognize that we only live to please one person! It’s way less complicated. Pastor Dave often says that we have “an audience of One”.

And I believe as we seek God’s pleasure over what others think and over what even we ourselves want, we begin to experience the blessing of God’s pleasure that overflows to every area of our lives. And it makes rough places smooth in all our relationships – even though not everyone will be pleased sometimes.

Paul had a very clear-headed view of how we relate to pleasing God, ourselves and others. He made his new purpose clear in Galatians 1:10:

“For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.”

A bondservant in Paul’s time was often a servant by choice. They lived entirely devoted to their master and for their pleasure. Paul recognized that a bondservant can’t be employed by two masters. And if he was still concerned about people’s thoughts and opinions over what Christ was revealing to him, he would be a bondservant of people rather than Christ.

Like Paul, you can’t live for the approval of both God and people. But you can seek to bless, serve and win people while living for God’s pleasure above all else. Paul understood this.

Becoming a Persuader of Men

Paul was a pleaser of God and a persuader of men.
Some people get this backwards and try to become persuaders of God and pleasers of men; spending their lives trying to convince God to bless their plans while endlessly working to please everyone around them.

While you and I are on this earth, like Paul we live to persuade people – not please them.
Paul set the example where all his energies were focused on bringing the gospel to everyone he encountered and persuading them to receive Christ.

You find many inspiring examples where he focused tirelessly on persuading people as you explore: 2 Cor 5:11, 1 Cor 9:19-23, Acts 18:4, Acts 19:8, Acts 26:28-29, Acts 28:23.

And while we also have many examples of God’s people working tirelessly to bring the gospel to our generation, one modern day example stands out to me.

I see Charlie Kirk as someone in our time who lived to please God and persuade men.
He committed himself to bringing a Christian worldview and engaging in persuasive conversations with students on college campuses in an environment that could often be hostile to the message of Christ.

When asked to reflect on 12 years of public life and ministry on college campuses at Turning Point USA, Charlie said:

“I care about what God thinks of me. I literally don’t care about what people say about me.”

“And so this idea that we should not say things that are true that someone might deem controversial, I deem to be a politically correct gospel. And I’m not trying to offend people… But if you say something that is true and someone takes offense to that, then that’s their problem, not your problem as the communicator.”

“Jesus called us to tell truth. Jesus called us to contest in the public square for his purposes.”

Just minutes before Charlie’s death on September 10, 2025, he was sharing the same verse we highlighted earlier (2 Corinthians 5:15) with the students at Utah Valley University:

“And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

He then said:
“That’s all pretty amazing evidence, not just intra-biblical evidence but extra-biblical evidence that Jesus Christ was a real person. He lived a perfect life. He was crucified, died, and rose on the third day, and he is Lord and God overall.”

What a testimony to be found declaring the message of Jesus Christ on the last day of your life!

Like Paul or like Charlie, we won’t always get everything 100% right as we seek to persuade others in our journey, but we all must take that up with One we are living to please and be faithful to persuade others till the end.

Let’s Commit

What we all seek isn’t found in winning everyone’s approval or even in following our own desires. It’s found in surrendering our lives to Christ and living for His pleasure alone. When God becomes our audience of One, we are free – not to please everyone, but to love them, serve them and faithfully persuade them with the truth of the gospel.

Let’s all recommit our lives to being pleasers of One and persuaders of many today.