My Struggle with Approval Addiction | Let it go Two | Rick Atchley

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Well, welcome to the Hills, Pastor Rick here, greeting our online family and everyone in person in one of our four campuses in Dallas or Keller in West Fort Worth or North Richland Hills. And I'm excited, as you just heard, that soon I'll be saying five campuses as we move to Weatherford, as well. When God gave me that vision over five years ago to ask for nations and generations, I felt like I heard clearly, your three campuses, you're gonna be five in five years. I had no clue where that would be, but God made it clear first to go to Dallas and now to go to Weatherford. And it just reminds me of why we need to keep praying. God has things in mind for our church that we don't see or know about yet, but He does. So let's keep asking for nations and generations and expect even more harvest in the future. Well, if you've heard me preach very many times, you know that I love the game of golf. Now, I am not a very good golfer, but I dress like one, okay? Because I learned a long time ago in the pro shop,

they don't care what your handicap is. They'll sell you a shirt. And so over the years, I have accumulated a rather stellar collection of golf shirts. In fact, on some of the campuses, some of the guys have a game they play each week. Who can guess where the shirt I'm wearing came from by the insignia, but I'm just gonna tell you right now today this shirt is from the Colonial Country Club right here in the Metroplex. And I'm wearing it because I'm gonna tell you a story about maybe the greatest golf moment in my life. And it happened at that club. Every year, the PGA, the Professional Golf Association holds a big tournament at the Colonial Country Club. And some of the best golfers in the world come to Fort Worth to try to win that tournament. Now, if you know anything about professional golf, a tournament is usually four days. It starts on Thursday, ends on Sunday. But on Wednesday, the day before it starts, they have something called a Pro-Am. It's a fundraiser. And people pay exorbitant amounts of money to get to play with a golf pro. Someone gifted me a spot in the Pro-Am. And so I've got a chance now to play with a real professional golfer inside the ropes

with all the people watching me play golf. And I was excited, and I was also terrified. Because there is a part of my golf game that is particularly bad, and it's called bunker shots. Maybe you've heard of a sand bunker or sand shot. You hit it out of the sand onto the green. I'm not good at it. It's all in my head, but it doesn't matter. I'm not good at it. So I prayed to the Lord. I don't want to be humiliated in front of all these people. Lord, would you please keep me from going into a bunker? And the Lord was kind and heard my prayer for seven holes. But on the seventh hole, I hit my shot into a big, deep bunker by the green. And I got down into that bunker, and that bunker was so deep that all I could see was the top of the flagstick. And my head is filled with these negative thoughts. This is not gonna go well. I'm gonna embarrass myself. I'm gonna try once, and then I'm gonna pick up my ball in shame and walk to the next tee. So I swung, and the ball took off, and I heard, because I couldn't see, I heard a clank, and 200 people jumped up and started going nuts. I knocked the ball in the hole on the flag. I had never done that in my life up to that point, and I've never done it since.

But I did it that day, and 200 people are screaming. And what did I do? Knowing it was complete luck, did I shrug my shoulders, walk up sheepishly to the green and say, man, that was so lucky? No! I strutted up to the green and got my ball in front of all those people like, well, of course it went in the hole. That's where I was aiming. Because everybody was clapping for me and it felt so good. Applause is so captivating. And then it takes you captive. And when you live for the acceptance of the crowd, you wind up in a very crowded prison. So we're talking about things that we need to let go so that we can walk in the freedom Christ purchased for us. And today I want to talk about one of the most common pieces of baggage of all. I call it approval addiction. Let me make you aware how I became aware of how heavy this load is. Some years ago on Easter Sunday, I preached a sermon on Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. You can read it in John chapter 11. Jesus said three things in that story. He said, roll the stone away. That's a word of hope. He said, Lazarus, come out. That's a word of life. But then Jesus said, take the grave clothes off him. That's a word of freedom. And it dawned on me. A lot of people have experienced miracle life, resurrection life, salvation life from Jesus, but they're not walking in freedom.

They're still bound by the clothes of the old life. So I asked the church that Easter Sunday, is that you? You're saved, but you're not free. And I gave everybody a card and said, write down on that card an area of your life where you feel like you live in bondage. And of course, I got thousands of cards. I read every one of them, prayed over every one of them, because I wanted to know what are the kinds of bondages that I need to talk more about in my sermons. There were five areas of bondage that were more frequent than all the others. Number five, and you could probably guess what some of them would be. Number five was anger and bitterness. I read a lot of cards about people who said, I was wounded or hurt in the past, and I bring that pain with me to the present, and I can't enjoy today because of what happened yesterday. Number four was financial incarceration. A lot of people said, I'm in bondage to debt. I'm in bondage to workaholism. Even I'm in bondage to scrolling on my phone, wasting time buying things I don't need. Number three was sexual sin. Most of the cards were for men, and most of the confession was pornography. It is a rampant sin in the church today. Number two, I thought would be number one, fear and worry. So many cards saying, I am so afraid of what could happen tomorrow, I have no joy today. But I did not expect number one. And it was stated in all kinds of ways, but essentially, it was this, feelings of low self-worth, struggling with people-pleasing, struggling with needing other people to validate my worth. One person put it, I'm so tired of searching for approval to feel valuable. The Bible talks about this, fear of man will prove to be a snare. Fear of man there is not a fear that someone could physically harm you. It's living constantly under the burden of seeking somebody else's approval.

Another version makes it more clear. It is dangerous to be concerned with what others think of you. People-pleasing is so heavy. But who hasn't felt the weight of that baggage? Because I believe everybody struggles with approval addiction. All of us in our fallen nature have this overwhelming longing for applause, to have other people validate us, or to put it another way, we really like to be liked. And sometimes, our desire to be liked overwhelms our desire to be right. There was a very well-known study done some years ago at a university. They put 10 students in a class, and an instructor would walk in, and there were three lines. lines on the blackboard, a very long line, a medium-sized line and a very short line. And the students were told, when the instructor points to the longest line, hold up your hand. How simple is that? But see, it really wasn't a test about can you recognize length of line. It was a test about peer pressure. Because nine of the students had been previously told, hold up your hand when the instructor points to the second longest line. They want to study what that 10th student will do. So the instructor would point to what was clearly the longest line. And every time that 10th student would put their hand up, then look around the room. And 75% of the time, they'd pull that hand down. What the study concluded is that most people, these are students from first grade all the way to seniors in high school, that most young people will give up their commitment to truth if that's the price to be included. And it's not just young people who make that compromise. We all do. And we pay a price. We pay the price because we find pressure to conform our values overwhelming. We'll say things are wrong that we really think are right. We'll say things are right that we really think are wrong because the latest opinion

poll said that's what the majority thinks. We'll miss out on authentic community because we're afraid to say who we really are because we might not receive approval. And our self-esteem gets eroded because it's hard to feel good about myself when I'm constantly faking my way through life. Think about it. So many of our what-was-I-thinking choices were driven by a desire to influence what other people think of us. Why did I laugh at that racist joke? Why have I started drinking so much with people I don't even like that much? Why did I make that sexual compromise? We make such bad choices when we're driven by this need to have other people approve of us. You see it in the Bible. And what happens is that approval addiction will come between you and God, like King Saul. God anointed him. God had big plans for him. But then one day on the radio, the new hit song was, David's killed tens of thousands and Saul is thousands. And Saul said, you mean I'm not the most popular anymore? And it poisoned his capacity to rule with justice. In the New Testament, you have a story about a couple named Ananias and Sapphira, and they sold a field and they brought some of the money to the church, but what they told the church is that they brought all the money. They didn't. But they wanted the church to applaud their generosity. And you can read in Acts 5, it didn't end too well for them. It incapacitates your faith when you care more about what other people think than you do what God thinks. Jesus said this, John 5, you try to get praise from each other, but you do not try to get

the praise that comes from the only God. So how can you believe? And let me confess that when it comes to the baggage of approval addiction, I've got some sore shoulders. Most pastors get into ministry because we like people. Now I know that you know I'm an introvert. I like people. I just need to rest after being around people a while, okay? But I do like people, and I want to help people, and most pastors like people. But the shadow side is we like to be liked by people. And I've known this about me for a long time. I'm going to tell you a story that's literally now 60 years old. It goes back to second or third grade. You see, you learn early in school there's a ladder of cool, and everybody wants to be at the top. Well, I never was at the top of the cool ladder at any grade of school. My nickname in school was the smart kid. I don't know if that's true. was true. I just know that was my nickname and that put me about middle on the ladder, but I wasn't at the bottom. At the bottom was a girl named Connie. Connie was socially awkward and Connie struggled so hard at school. She just couldn't seem to read or to do math at the pace the rest of us were learning. I'm sure Connie had learning disabilities, but we didn't know much about that back then. We just said Connie's not smart. So we would do this game every day at math time where the teacher would have you stand up next to someone's desk. They would stand up and she would hold up a flash card, you know, seven plus six, three times four, and whoever got the right answer first could go to the next desk and you go around the room and whoever got back to their desk would get a donut. I would usually get the donut. I was the smart kid. So this day the teacher said, Rick, we'll start with you. Pick someone. And I looked around the room and all the cool kids that I wanted so desperately to like me gave me the same look. Don't pick me. So what am I going to do? And then I remembered, well,

there's somebody I can pick or pick on. And I said, I choose Connie. And everybody laughed because they knew she had no chance and she didn't. She stood up, I stood by her desk, the teacher held up the card. I had the answer before she had finished reading the question. And everybody laughed again. And Connie said, now, I still remember vividly. I can see her face. And I looked in her eyes and her eyes said not, I hate you. But her eyes said, why did you hurt me? I thought you were one of the nice boys. And I remember in that moment being so ashamed of myself that my sick desire to be liked had made me somebody I didn't like. This is what approval addiction does to us. It's fatal and it's also futile. Because I've learned that nobody wins the people-pleasing race. That you're never going to be happy when your life mission is to see how many people you can make happy. That it's hard to like a life where every day you're just chasing likes to see how many you can get. If you've entered the people-pleasing race, you are running in circles inside of a prison. And you can't win this race because this race has no finish line. You see, this race doesn't applaud grace. It applauds outpace. What I mean by this is that you want applause in this world, performance and appearance. Be the best, look the best. Did you hit the most home runs? Are you on the most magazine covers? Have you made the most money? You have the most letters after your name? Do you have the most likes on your social media platform? That's what gets applauded. And I don't care how hard and how well you think you're running the race. There is somebody behind you that is going to pass you someday. Nobody wins this race. J.R. Vassar is a popular author and theologian. And some years ago, he's in a nation in Southeast Asia. And this nation had this temple with this big Buddha that was a national treasure. And he went and he watches people making pilgrimage. I mean, dirt poor people giving the very last of their money, hoping this Buddha will bless them. And as you watch, he noticed and saw scaffolding behind the statue because the Buddha was crumbling. There were workers back there making repairs. And he thought, how sad. Broken people praying to a broken Buddha, hoping the broken Buddha can fix their broken lives while somebody else is repairing the broken Buddha. But then he thought, is it that different back home? Empty people, begging other empty people to fill them up. This is what approval addiction does.

It's a prison. You can run. You're not going to win. And is it worth it to enter a race that gives other people permission to decide if we have worth? It is a weight you were not meant to carry and it will not carry you closer to Jesus. There's a verse I think pastors should probably read every day and the rest of us should read every week from Galatians. And here's what Paul says. Obviously, I'm not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ's servant. Isn't it true in our Bibles? There are many examples of people that pleased God because they made choices that didn't please the crowd. In fact, this is how Jesus wound up on the cross. He could have pleased the crowd. He could have said, I'll be your king. Let's go start a war with the Romans tomorrow. They would have died for him. And instead he chose to die for them. Because Jesus lived for an audience of one. And that's what free people do. They value what God thinks about their value. So how do we let this go? It's not easy. It's not easy because tomorrow on your TVs and your radios and on your phones, you're going to be bombarded with a thousand different messages of what you need to think or buy or do to be more popular. So to the core of our being, to escape that jail, we've got to believe this. That somebody has already proved how much we are worth. That we don't need to chase what has already been bestowed. You are going to lug a lot of luggage if you live life for a blessing. So think about this. What if you lived your life from a blessing?

What if worth has been conferred on you before your appearance or performance had even been considered? This is the word of the Lord. This is the fruit of the gospel. Listen again to Paul. God chose us before the world was made so that we would be his holy people. People without blame before him. Because of his love, God had already decided to make us his own children through Jesus Christ. That was what he wanted and what pleased him. This is God's truth. That God has declared, God has decided before you did anything, before you earned anything, before anyone had a chance to applaud. God has already decided you're valuable because he says so. And it pleases him to say so. The gospel is an invitation to stop achieving and start receiving. Stop letting other people determine your value because God has already decided the answer to that question. Now, to help you remember this idea, I'm going to introduce you to a friend of mine. We've known each other almost as long as I can remember. In fact, he stays in my office. Meet Tim the teddy bear. Tim is my teddy bear. I cannot remember when Tim came into my office. This is half an hour back we go. I don't know why his name is Tim. I called him that, but I don't know why. And you can see, Tim is not much of a teddy bear. He would not win a teddy bear race. His nose is permanently bent. His eyes are stuck and don't move anymore. His fur is completely matted. If you could see up close on the back, he's been restitched up several times and stuffing put back in because it's come out. So, my senior year of high school, my parents decided they were moving to a new city.

They decided to have a garage sale. Though they get some tables out in the garage and on the driveway selling things they didn't want to take with them. And I come home from school, and there's Tim, and he's on one of these tables, and my mother has put a Post-it note on his belly, 25 cents. I picked up Tim, and I went and found my mother. And for the first time in my life, I called her to public repentance. And I made it clear that Tim was not to be sold at any time to anybody for any price. Because Tim's value was determined, not by anybody else's opinion of him. His value was determined by the one who owns him and who loves him, and so was yours. And God didn't just proclaim His love for you. He proved it. The Scripture says God chose His great love for us in this way. Christ died for us while we were still sinners. We don't need to live for the approval of others. We need to live from the approval of God. And when you think you matter to God, it doesn't matter what other people think. You'll leave the prison of opinion, and you'll start to run the race of grace. You will live from your blessing, not for a blessing. And here's the beauty. When you live that way, you become a blessing to all the people whose applause you no longer live for. Here's what I've learned, that anybody freed by love can love anybody. And isn't that God's goal for us? To become people of radical love. What is the well-lived life? I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and I love my neighbor as myself. But here's the truth. You can't become a lover and a pleaser at the same time, because they're living for different things.

A pleaser wants applause, and applause is always earned. It's a transaction. I do perform, look like, and you let me know how much you approve. You can't love people that way. That's manipulation. That's an exchange. That's a transaction. But when you let go of people-pleasing, you are free to really love people unconditionally, because you're not looking to get anything back. It's not a transaction. It's a gift. That's what the Bible means when it says, we love because God first loved us. We don't love people to get love. We love people because we are loved, and this is how Jesus lived. This explains why Jesus could love everybody. He could love a practicing prostitute. He could love a traitorous tax collector. He could love a self-righteous Pharisee. Jesus could love everybody, because Jesus didn't need the approval of anybody. He was living from His blessing, not to get a blessing. And I believe that we can be that free, that in the power of the Spirit, we can put down the luggage and live free of approval addiction. So I'm in high school, and for reasons I don't have time to explain, I was always about a year younger than anyone in my class. So at the end of my freshman year of high school, some of my friends are turning 16 and getting their driver's license. By the end of my sophomore year, all of my classmates had turned 16 and were driving cars. So when I start my junior year of high school, I'm still not 16, and I can't wait, because if you can drive a car, you become a little more cool.

I wasn't at the top of the cool ladder, but I knew the day I got a car, I'll go up at least one rung. I was never at the top, but I wasn't at the bottom. That's where Daryl was. Daryl was the Connie of my high school, and Daryl really was, in some ways, a nerd. He was socially awkward. He literally had glasses that were taped together and wore a pocket protector with pins in it. And it was never out of bounds to make fun of Daryl. He would get on a school bus to go to school, and he didn't have a car, not because he wasn't 16, because he couldn't afford one. And the kids would start in on Daryl. And imagine every day having your self-esteem shattered before you even start school. That was Daryl's life. But see, I knew something that a lot of the kids didn't know, because Daryl lived about five houses up the street from me. And Daryl's father was an alcoholic, and when he was drunk, which was most of the time, he was mean. More than once, I remember walking by Daryl's house and hearing Daryl's father screaming at him and hoping that's all he was doing. He got more abuse at home than he got at school, and that's all he got at school. So I turned 16. I got together $600, and I bought an old Chevy, my first car. Some of you remember that feeling? I cannot wait. Tomorrow, I am driving to school. I am moving up the ladder, having a supper with the family of the doorbell rings, and I go to the porch, and there's Daryl. Rick, is that your car? Yeah, Daryl, it's my car. Are you going to drive to school tomorrow?

Yeah, I'm going to drive to school tomorrow. Can I have a ride? Now, I'm not proud of this, but you know the first thought that went through my mind. Give Daryl a ride? I won't go up the coal ladder. I'll go down, but then I looked into Daryl's eyes, and I realized he wasn't asking me for a ride. He was asking me for a rescue. Yeah, Daryl, I'll give you a ride, and I did. Every day for the rest of my junior year of high school, Daryl and I were friends. Did not make me more cool, but I actually grew to like Daryl, and I decided if you have to be cruel to be cool, then maybe being cool is not so cool. I remember exactly where I was standing. I could take you there today, in my backyard, starting my senior year, and I hear this sound, and here's this whole clunker belching smoke coming up our alley, and it stops, and Daryl gets out, Rick, I got a car, and I wanted you to be the first person to see it. You know, I didn't know anything about the Holy Spirit back then. What I can tell you in that moment is the first time I remember feeling the tangible smile of God. It's freedom is what it feels like, to live able to love anybody, because nobody gets to tell you what you're worth. God has already declared what He thinks of you, so don't live in the prison of what others think. Let it go, and embrace a love that will always hold on to you. Let me pray for us. Father, this is hard. Everything about our culture shouts every day, do this, wear this, buy this, think this, and you'll get likes. And Father, it leads. He's down the road that just hurts us and hurts people.

We don't want to carry that baggage anymore. So, Holy Spirit, help us let it go. Help us live like Jesus did. So sure of what you said about Him, that He was free to live loved and loving. Help us, Holy Spirit, to live like Jesus. We'll be freer. We'll love better. We want to do that. We pray in Jesus' name, amen, amen.