1 Thessalonians 2:1-7: in context

Paul recalls his ministry among the Thessalonians. Though he had been shamefully treated at Philippi, he came to them and spoke the gospel boldly amid much opposition. His message, he insists, was not from error or impurity or trickery; he did not use flattering words or a mask for greed, nor did he seek glory from people. Rather, he says, we speak, not to please men, but God, who tests our hearts. And he was gentle among them, like a nursing mother caring for her children.

The center of Paul's account is a statement about whose approval he sought: we speak, not to please men, but God, who tests our hearts. Paul had been entrusted with the gospel, and he ministered it not to win human approval, not to flatter or ingratiate himself, not to seek the praise of the people he served, but to please God, the one who sees and tests the heart. His audience, ultimately, was God alone; and that freed him from the whole tangle of people-pleasing, flattery, and the anxious pursuit of others' good opinion. There is a deep freedom in this that we need. So much of our anxiety and our compromise comes from living for the approval of people, shaping our words and actions to win their praise, fearing their disapproval, flattering, hedging, performing for an audience of human opinion. It is an exhausting and enslaving way to live, forever adjusting ourselves to what others want to see. Paul lived for a different audience: God, who tests the heart. He sought God's approval, not people's, and so could speak the truth boldly whether it pleased his hearers or not, could serve without flattering, could act without calculating the praise it would earn. To live for the approval of God rather than of people is to be freed from the tyranny of human opinion. It does not make us indifferent to others, Paul was gentle among them, tender as a nursing mother, but it means their approval is no longer what drives us; God's is. If I were still pleasing men, Paul says elsewhere, I would not be a servant of Christ. The freedom is to live before an audience of One, seeking the approval of the God who tests the heart, released from the endless, anxious labor of pleasing everyone else.

Do I live for the approval of people, shaping my words and actions to win their praise and fearing their disapproval, exhausted by performing for an audience of human opinion, or can I live as Paul did, for God who tests the heart, seeking his approval rather than people's, and so be freed from the tyranny of pleasing everyone?