In the children’s book “You are Special” by Max Lucado, a little wooden boy named Punchinello can’t seem to get other people to like him. He’s not smart, athletic, handsome, or gifted. So the other wooden people called Wemmicks stick gray dots on him instead of golden stars. In fact, all of the Wemmicks are covered with either gray dots or golden stars.

One day, Punchinello meets a Wemmick who doesn’t have any stars or dots on her. When he asks her why, she simply tells him that he needs to come to the woodcarvers shop and meet Eli, the maker of the Wemmicks. Upon meeting him, Eli tells Punchinello, “You are special because I made you – and I don’t make mistakes.” As he hears this, Punchinello thinks to himself, “I think he really means it,” and as he thinks this thought, a gray dot falls off of him.

I love this story because it is a great illustration of how we live our lives. We run around giving ourselves and each other marks – good or bad. We praise some and put down others. We admire and applaud or we criticize and condemn. We are a fickle people.

Real Life Wemmicks

In Acts 14, we read that the Apostle Paul together with his partner in ministry, Barnabas, were preaching powerfully and God was doing miraculous signs and wonders through them. When they were in Lystra, they prayed for a man who had been crippled from his birth and he was healed.

As a result, the crowd that saw this miracle decided that Paul and Barnabas were the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes and could scarcely be restrained from sacrificing to them.

Shortly after this “Worship Paul” fest, some Jews from Antioch arrived and won the crowd over to their side. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of town, thinking he was dead.

Why You Shouldn’t Live for the Praise of Man

This story from Paul’s life is a great example of how quickly people can change their opinion of someone. Moments before they stoned Paul, the same people were literally worshipping him. Go figure.

Crowds are fickle. People’s opinions can change rapidly. But I love how this story ends. The people who really loved Paul gathered around him and helped raise him up.

Then what did Paul do? Whine to his friends that people were mean to him? Lick his wounds and mope for awhile that he wasn’t popular with the crowd anymore?

Not Paul. He literally “got up and went back into the town. The next day he left with Barnabas for Derbe” (verse 20).

He didn’t care what people thought about him because he didn’t live for their approval. In fact, he wrote to the church of Galatia that when you choose to follow Christ, you are choosing to make His opinion of you the only one that matters:

“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10).

Believing What God Says About You

Punchinello and Paul have something in common. Both of them learned how to keep the opinions of people from “sticking” to them and keeping them down. They learned to listen to the only opinion that mattered: their Maker’s.

Have you listened too long to voices who say that you won’t amount to anything? That you’re too much of this or not enough of that? Maybe the most critical voice you hear is your own.

The only way to silence those voices is to drown them out with the Voice of Heavenly Love – the One who created You and says, “You are special because I made you – and I don’t make mistakes.”

Choose to believe what HE says about you today. Stand up, shake off the opinions of others and live your life for God alone.

His is the only approval that you need.