Penny's Prayer Room - Ep 10

Jul 9
3 min read

Whose Approval are you seeking?

Whose Approval Are You Seeking?

A Devotional from Penny’s Prayer Room™

Written by deZengo® | For END Silence™ / Patchwork Ministries™

Welcome to Penny’s Prayer Room™. Today’s devotion is a heart check—not a soft one, and not a cute little reminder to “stop caring what people think.” We are going deeper than that.

If we are honest, many of us are still carrying wounds around approval. We want to be liked. We want to be noticed. We want to be understood. We want the people we care about to care back. We want our work to matter, our posts to reach someone, and our videos to be seen. We want someone, somewhere, to say: “I see you. I hear you. You matter.”

That desire, by itself, is not evil. God created us for fellowship; He created us to love and be loved. But when the approval of people becomes louder than the voice of God, we can lose ourselves trying to please people who were never meant to rule our hearts.

The Anchor

Our scripture anchor today is Galatians 1:10 (KJV):

“For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”

The Heart Check

So today, we have to ask: Whose approval are we seeking?

This goes beyond our words or our social media presence. It’s about the hidden places of the heart. Who are we trying to impress? Who are we afraid of disappointing? Whose silence bothers us more than it should? Whose opinion has started getting louder than God’s voice?

Pause for a moment and ask yourself:

Where do I feel unseen right now?
Whose approval have I been craving?
Whose rejection still irritates me, grieves me, or follows me around?
Whose acceptance have I been treating like proof that I matter?

This struggle often sneaks in quietly. We ask ourselves: Am I serving God, or am I secretly trying to become important? Am I sharing truth, or am I chasing applause? Am I trying to be faithful, or am I trying to be famous?

The Reality of Codependency

Whether it is your family, your church, a spouse, a friend, or a boss—we often fall into the trap of "performance." We confuse being needed with being loved, and we confuse keeping the peace with being obedient.

We start shrinking the truth and ignoring conviction just to keep others happy. But when we seek people’s approval first, we become bendable in the wrong direction. And when those people still reject us, judge us, or walk away, we feel crushed—because we gave them a throne in our heart that only God was meant to sit on.

The Freedom of the Cross

The ground is level at the foot of the cross. Jesus did not come for people pretending they had no wounds; He came for the lost, the sick, the bound, and the bruised. He came for the ones everybody else stepped over.

The question for today is not: “Do people approve of me?”

The question is: “Lord, are You pleased with my obedience?”

If I am living to please people, I will eventually compromise. If I am living to please God, I may disappoint people. That is hard, but it is also freedom. People are unstable—they clap today and criticize tomorrow. But God is not confused about who you are. He sees the labor, the tears, the shaking hands, and the obedience nobody else noticed.

A Prayer for Seeking God’s Approval

Lord Jesus, search my heart today.

Show me where I have chased approval, applause, or control more than I have chased obedience to You. Forgive me for the times I measured my worth by the opinions of others. Heal the codependent places in me that learned to survive by keeping someone else happy.

Remind me that I do not have to perform for love, beg for worth, or become smaller to be accepted. I belong to You.

Teach me to love people without worshiping their approval. Help me care more about becoming who You called me to be than becoming who people expect me to be. When my pride is wounded, steady me. When I feel unseen, remind me that You see. Lord, make me faithful. Not famous. Faithful.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Closing Thought

People may misunderstand you. People may overlook you. But they do not get the final word over your life. God does.

Ask yourself once more: What would change if I lived like God’s approval mattered most?

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© 2026 deZengoDESIGNS®. All rights reserved. No part of this devotional may be copied, reproduced, distributed, or used commercially without written permission, except for brief quotations used for review, teaching, or ministry encouragement with proper credit.