As we embrace each new day, we should do so in prayer and thankfulness, and we should give our day to the Lord. To give our day to the Lord means that everything we do is led by His Spirit, and this is a very conscious choice that each of us is privileged to make. When we make this righteous decision, we demonstrate a heart posture that pleases our Heavenly Father.
Our love for Him should deepen continually, and as His children, we should want to please Him in all that we do, even in the small things. When we make up our bed in the mornings, it should be for the Lord. When we brush our teeth and groom ourselves, it should be for the Lord. When we nourish our bodies with food and drink, that should be done for Him as well. Every action, no matter how simple, should be done for our wonderful and generous God, for it is only because of His goodness and love that we have life and the ability to move through our days.
In Romans 12:1 (NLT), God speaks through the Apostle Paul, saying, “1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.” We might expect that we should be the ones begging God, but in this verse, He lovingly pleads with us to open the door wide open to Him so that He can lead, guide, and direct us to the more-than-abundant life that He’s made available through Jesus Christ. God wants us to live consistent with who we really are, and He pleads with us to give our bodies and all they contain to Him. He tells us that the way to truly worship Him is to offer our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice. This is the least we can do in response to His immeasurable love and for all that He’s done for us.
Our Responsibility to Love and Honor God
Our well of gratitude towards Him should be deep, but many of our actions do not line up with that. Too many of us are more obsessed with what other people think about us than we are about pleasing our Heavenly Father. People spend tons of money on designer clothes and shoes, but they aren’t paying their tithes. They are not giving God the glory He deserves. Instead, they’re trying to hog it for themselves by looking and acting the same way that society does. Their motivation is to imitate celebrities when they should be imitating Christ.
The Apostle Paul said in Galatians 1:10 (NLT), “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.” When pleasing people–seeking their praise and admiration–is a prime motivation for us, we risk making idols of them. Whether it’s celebrities, influencers, or even those closest to us, when admiration goes beyond a simple appreciation and moves to obsession, we put our souls at risk of misalignment with God’s purpose for us.
Jesus Christ warns in Matthew 10:37 (NLT), “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine. Or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.” Making an altar for people in our hearts is idolatry. We’re bowing to them, and this will disconnect us from God’s Will and injure our souls. We can’t do this if we want to please our Heavenly Father. When people, rather than God, take the highest place in our lives, the soul becomes entrapped in unhealthy relationships or expectations. This form of idolatry can be particularly damaging in the context of romantic relationships, where an individual may idolize their partner, seeking fulfillment, identity, and security in them rather than in God.
Idolizing Partners
At the core, idolizing a partner or anyone for that matter, creates a heavy burden of expectation on that person, and they are incapable of carrying that load or fulfilling our expectations. We start looking to them for what only God can provide: ultimate fulfillment, security, and worth. Colossians 2:10 (NLT) declares, “So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.” Only God can fill our cups, and this is just the simple truth. He has made us complete through our union with Christ; no other union can do this for us. Some of us demand certain things from a partner because we haven’t addressed some of our own internal issues. We look to them to make us whole and inadvertently place an unrealistic weight on them. This will entangle any relationship in an unhealthy way. It disrupts our peace as well as our partner’s.
From a spiritual standpoint, this misalignment with God distorts our understanding of love. We can easily get caught up in obsession or dependency, erroneously thinking this to be love. Often there’s an emptiness in our souls, and sometimes our way of satisfying it is to try to fit a whole person into it. They only make that hole bigger. No human being can fill this space. It’s like trying to pour water into a cup with a crack in it. No matter how much we try to fill it, the water just keeps leaking out. When we try to fill the void in our hearts with people or things instead of God, nothing satisfies our hunger. People can give us companionship and other beautiful things, but they can’t give us the peace and completeness that only God can provide.
We need to be anchored in God’s love and peace. Then, we can build relationships that honor Him, because our souls are continually nourished by our faith in Heavenly Father. We will no longer look to people to fill us up, because that space is already filled by God. We can love from a place of security instead of clinging to someone out of desperation, hoping they’ll make us feel whole. Living through His love changes everything. Our relationships become healthier because they’re no longer built on unrealistic expectations; they will be built on the wholeness we have in Christ. Loving through our blessed Lord is the way to stop looking to people to do what only He can, and this frees us to love without the weight of neediness or fear. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“A Prospering Soul – Part 5 -Stop Bowing to People”, written by Rev. Fran Mack. Edits by Kim Times and K. Lizzie for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2025. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.