Matthew 23:6-7<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, \u2018Rabbi, Rabbi.\u2019 \u201c<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The populist wants popularity. He always likes people around him and loves the crowd feeling. You find him many times in the places people gather and he loves to be celebrated by the crowd. He\u2019s egocentric, and everything plays to his ego. If you want to get him, flatter him in the presence of others, and he will love you. The populist loves titles, particularly if it makes him feel important and superior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it should not be for kingdom-minded saints. We who belong to heaven\u2019s citizenship do not need the popularity here. On the contrary, we strive for the popularity from above, where a crowd of witnesses watch us and cheer us on. We don\u2019t need the crowd to celebrate us here because we know we are celebrated in another world. Populism is a vice because the populist is more concerned with pleasing the masses than doing right, and whatever would reduce his popularity is seen as an enemy. But for us, our popularity doesn\u2019t count; the only thing that counts is pleasing God, and if pleasing Him would make us unpopular here, we rejoice at the unpopularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFather, I want to be like Jesus, who had different seasons in His life but His focus was always to please You. I don\u2019t care for the popularity Lord. Help the gaze of my heart to only be centered on pleasing You irrespective of what men think of me. In Jesus name. Amen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Matthew 23:6-7 \u201cThey love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men, \u2018Rabbi, Rabbi.\u2019 \u201c The populist wants popularity. He always likes people around him and loves the crowd feeling. You find him many times in the places people gather and he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-reflections-from-matthew"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Reflections-from-Matthew.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4352,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350\/revisions\/4352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}