Is there anything quite like the level of desperation we feel when seeking the approval of our parents?

I can remember as a child not being willing to go to sleep until an argument had been reconciled, even creeping out of bed at night to make sure Mom and Dad weren’t angry with me anymore.

Even as an adult, those feelings have not diminished in the least. In fact, since the situations I encounter these days are a bit more important in the realm of the eternal (raising small humans rather than being late for curfew), perhaps my desire for my parents to be proud of me has even grown.

What is this longing we have for those in authority over us to approve of us?

Even those who have had too many authority figures abuse their power have only pushed those yearnings deep down rather than never having had those feelings in the first place.

It must be something placed inside of us, something sown in the soil of our hearts.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

It must be a need to be who we were created to be, a need for the One who made us to approve of what we have become.

Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well…How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

The desperate hope that I will be able to please my parents must be the natural outflow of my hope that I will be able to please my God.

And just as my parents guided and taught me to do the things that pleased them, so God will teach me how to please Him, and I yearn in my deepest places for Him to do so.

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!

I have caught a glimpse of the beauty that we can become, and that glimpse drives the desire for God to judge our hearts and help us to look more like Jesus. I want Him to judge me so that He can help me become who He created me to be.

And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

May God, out of His infinite grace, judge us all.

Scripture is from Psalm 139