More energy has been spent on this one thing than on building the Panama Canal, constructing the Great Pyramids, or creating the Interstate Highway system. More energy!
More tears have been shed on this one item than on the depredations of poverty, the destruction wrought by great storms, or a thousand afternoon soap opera tragedies. More tears!
More anxiety has been generated by this one issue than by being afraid of the dark, more than by getting scared that you might run out of money before you run out of month, more even than by being afraid of what she will say the first time you ask her out on a date. More anxiety!
I am talking about one central issue: DO THEY LIKE ME? Do they like me? Down deep, I suspect, every one of us more bothered by that one thing than anything else. Does the crowd I run with really like me? Or do they just say things in order not to hurt my feelings? Oh, I know I have some friends, but are they real friends? What do they say when my back is turned? What do they think when they think of me? Oh, I want everybody to like me!
Isn’t that right? Isn’t that pretty much what we are all worried about?
I know our young people feel this. Our children just have to have the right stuff to fit in, so that they will be liked. It has to be the right color and the right brand and the whole thing. You say, "I am not paying a hundred dollars for a pair of smelly old shoes." And they say, "Mom, if I don’t get those shoes I will just die, because everybody has them and if you don’t have them, the cool kids won’t like you."
Let me tell you a story. It’s a story about a boy who had to go to school every day carrying the wrong stuff. In his school it wasn’t clothes or shoes, but it was lunches. How did you carry your lunch? May not sound like much, but, let me tell you, it was a very big deal.
The thing was, someone somewhere somehow had decreed that the cool thing was to bring your lunch in a canvas tote bag. Not a brown bag and not a plastic bag, but a canvas tote bag. Nor could it be a lunch box. Lunch boxes were for little kids, but this boy was in junior high school, so no lunch boxes, unless maybe, maybe possibly, a workman’s type pail. But cartoon characters? Brightly decorated lunch boxes with funny faces on them? No way! But this boy’s mother had said, "The lunch box you carried back in the fifth and sixth grades is perfectly all right, and you will carry Mickey Mouse to school every day."
(You understand this was back before the Baptists decreed that we should boycott all things Disney!). And so off to school he went, each day, trying to hide that lunch box behind his books, stuffing that lunch box in his locker, going to the cafeteria with the stupid thing tucked away down under the chair, convinced, absolutely convinced that "they" didn’t like him, all because of that lunch box.
You say, "How ridiculous! Let them think what they want to about lunch boxes. I know I’m okay." Yes, you say that now, but I’ll bet you had a lunch box issue today. I’ll bet you had, no, I’ll bet you have, now, something going on in your life that you think keeps everybody from liking you, and you are trying to hide it. It may not be a Mickey Mouse lunch box, but it is something equally Mickey Mouse, something equally insignificant, but it has taken on enormous proportions, and you think, you just know, it keeps everybody from liking you.
Is it your appearance? You’re a little heavy, and you feel they don’t like you because of it. You’re a little down at the heels, never could afford to dress like the rest of them. They don’t like you because you can’t dress well.
Is it your car? You drive an econobox instead of a sport ute. Is it your family? They say all the wrong things at all the wrong times. Is it your job? It’s so ordinary. Is it your you? You never have the witty response, you just can’t meet and greet, what is wrong with me? Recognize anything?
We want everybody to like us. That is one of our great expectations, one of our fond dreams. But we don’t think it is going to happen. We don’t think we’ll ever make it.
God’s word is going to help you. God’s word is going to put all that into perspective for you. Together we are going to find out what to do about this great expectation, this hope that everybody will like me.
First, a question-. is it realistic to suppose that everybody will like you? If you want everybody, everybody, to like you, are you in touch with reality?
No? Why not?
The underlying truth in the passage of Scripture we read together is that having everybody like us is not completely under our control. There are going to be those who will just not take to us. It’s not just us and the way we do things. It’s the peculiar, quirky nature of other people, some of whom you cannot please no matter what you do.
Look at what Paul says. Verse 14: "Bless those who persecute you." There are going to be persecutors. It’s just a given. It will happen. There are going to be those who just don’t like you.
Years ago a student at Cambridge University in England went to class and met his professor, a Dr. Thomas Fell. Dr. Fell was a perfectly good teacher; he knew his subject, he was competent and all of that. But this student didn’t like Dr. Fell. He just didn’t, that’s all. And so one day the student wrote a little piece of poetry that has stuck around and still teaches us something. He wrote,
"I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.
The reason why I cannot tell.
But this I know and know full well.
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell!"
It’s just that crazy! You want everybody to like you? Get over it! Not going to happen. And so Paul is very realistic when he says, "if it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." If it is possible, so far as it depends on you ... just remember that it’s not all you. It’s not all what you do. The crowd out there cannot be controlled. They are unpredictable.
But, insofar as it depends on you, what can you do about your need to have everyone like you?
Four things from God’s word. Four truths. I want you to memorize these with me; they are:
Live, Love, Lot go, and Leave it to God. Repeat: Live, Love, Let go, and Leave it to God.
I
You can live in integrity. He says, "Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good." That means you can work out in your own value system what is right and what is wrong, and you can stick by it. That means you can determine, as a spiritual person, what God wants and does not want, and you can live by that. You can live in integrity. You can figure out what deep down you really value, what you think has lasting and eternal value, and you can live by that. "Hate what is evil,
hold fast to what is good."
Now, what’s that got to do with everybody liking us? If we decide we are going to live by our principles, will that make them like us? Will that make us popular?
No, but it will earn respect. It will earn respect. And actually, the first step on the road to being a likable person is to be a person others can respect, because they know you will be true to some things that matter. Because they will know they can trust you.
There may be that crowd out there that’s doing drugs and drinks. They may look like the place to be and the people to be with. And if you don’t get in it with them, they may laugh at you. But I tell you what- let the day come that one of them is in trouble, and the person they will want is not their fellow dopehead. The person they will want is the one who lived out of his principles, who held on to what is good. Let the day come when they really need a friend, they will turn to somebody they can trust before they will turn to somebody who has played fast and loose with things.
The first step on getting everybody, or at least somebody, to like us, is to live in integrity.
II
And the second thing we can do is to love by choice. To love by choice. What do we mean about loving by choice?
We mean that we do more than what we feel like doing in the tummy! It means that we decide to do what love commands rather than just what all those self-centered feelings tell us.
Look: Verse 10, "Outdo one another in showing honor’. That means that you scramble to reach out to others- you don’t wait until they reach out to you.
Verse 13, "Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers," That’s loving by choice. It doesn’t say, "if they give you a gift, then you should give them one." It doesn’t say, "I guess I owe her a favor or I owe him some attention." It says, get out there and give. Find a way to love them, even before they love you, even if they don’t love you.
Drop down to verse 20. Amazing stuff. "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink." Choose to love. Love by choice.
You see, we think love is a feeling. A warm fuzzy. And it isn’t. Not at all. Love is action. Love is a choice. Insofar as it depends on you, love them by your own choice, and there will be a response. It may not be today or tomorrow, but there will be a response.
III
Third. Review? Live in integrity, love by choice. And now, if you want to work toward everybody liking you, even though you know that isn’t going to happen completely, you can let go. You can let go of negative thoughts, critical speech, and cutting words. You can let go of living out of act the negative stuff that builds up.
Let’s find the verbs that teach us to let go of the negative stuff. I’ll get you started. Verse 12, "Rejoice in hope." It says, no matter how much heavy duty negativism there is around me, I’m going to let it go and take joy in every shred of hope. "Rejoice in hope".
All right, what other phrases do you see that help us let go of unhealthy stuff?
"Be patient in suffering." There’s realism again. Some suffering is going to come. They are going to put you down. Accept that! But be patient. Wait. It will pass. It will. What else?
How about "bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse."? Do you know the word "defensive"?! What does defensive mean?
Defensive means that we feel the need to be thought right. Defensive means not only that we want to set the record straight, but we also want to ridicule and put down the folks who think otherwise. Defensive means we just don’t let go of the emotional baggage that’s in us, but we nurse it, we keep it, we make an issue out of it.
And that’s easy to do. It’s easy to be defensive. My wife will tell you that I have a need always to be right! That I will jump to thinking that I am being misunderstood and misrepresented and all the rest. And oh, how tempting it is just to let go with a barrage of complaint and criticism, how much we want to tell them off! And let me just tell her right now ......!
But do you know what? When we give in to the temptation to tell others off and get our negative feelings aired, we have accomplished nothing. We have just put distance into our relationships. God’s word says, "Let go". Let go of the negative, self-serving stuff. "Bless those who persecute, do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all."
If your great expectation is that everybody will like you, although you have to know it isn’t going to happen, then let go. Let go of negative feelings, let go of the need to retaliate, let go of defensiveness. Just let go.
IV
But most of all. Most important of all. Forget the other three L words if you must and remember this one: Leave it to God, whose child you are. Leave it to God.
Quick review. I hope that everybody will like me. How do I get there? Live in integrity. Love by choice. Let go of negative feelings. And now, leave it to God.
The heart of the matter is this. We are working so hard to please others, who are likely to repay us by snubbing us and making life tough. But we have the option of working to please God, who is faithful, who has loved us and who will love us, to the end.
If you need for everybody around you to like you, you will wait for a hundred years, and never get there. But if you listen to God’s word and leave this to God, you will find out that love grows here, right now.
Verse 19. "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God." Or better, leave room for the justice of God. Leave room for God to do what God does. You don’t have to manage it all. God will take care of it, if you leave room for God’s justice.
Folks, here is the Gospel. You are liked. You are loved. You are liked and loved by your creator, who in Jesus Christ has proclaimed His love for you throughout all time. You are liked. You are loved. You are liked and loved by somebody very special. You are liked and loved by God, who in Jesus Christ loved us while we were yet sinners, loved us despite our shortcomings, loved us no matter what we wear or how we look or what we drive or where we live. God, who in Jesus Christ, loved us enough to die for us.
That’s what matters! That’s what counts! That’s the good news. There may be some folks out there you wish would like you, and maybe they will, if you live in integrity, love by choice, and let go of negativism. But even if they don’t you can leave it to God, because God loves you. God loves you unconditionally. God loves you no matter what.
Forget the energy you have spent on worrying whether everybody will like you! You are a child of God, and God loves you.
Dry the tears you have shed concerned that you are not making it in the right crowd. You belong to Christ, and Christ embraces you.
Release the anxiety you have cooked up about whether you are acceptable. The blood of Jesus Christ has bought you and paid for you! You are accepted!
For, in the last analysis, it is only because God loved the boy with the wrong lunch box that he can stand up here this morning and preach and pray and point you to what to do so that everybody will like you.
