When you know what God thinks about you, you don’t care what others think about you

Much of how a person acts is based on their expectation of how others will view them. The desire to please others can lead us to improvement, but only up to the limit of what they see, the limit of what they are willing to say, and the limit of what they have already become. When you act to please God, not man, you gain strength to improve yourself fully—freed from the limits of others, and subject only to the limits of the good you are presently capable of seeing in him.

As you stretch to measure up to God’s idea of your potential, you will graduate beyond caring what those less like Jesus than you think about you.¹