🏺 Choose Jesus Over People-Pleasing | Matthew 26 Devotional (7-Step QT)

7-Step QT Notes

1. 🙏 Quiet Time

Pause.

Take a deep breath.

Ask God to help you care more about His approval than people’s approval.

2. 📅 March 25, 2026

Today’s passage reminds us:

A beautiful life is lived for Jesus, not for the applause of people.

3. ✝️ Matthew 26:1-13

Jesus told His disciples that the Passover was near and that He would soon be handed over to be crucified. While the religious leaders were secretly planning to arrest and kill Him, a woman in Bethany poured very expensive ointment on Jesus as an act of deep love and devotion. Though others criticized her, Jesus called it a beautiful thing and said her act would be remembered wherever the gospel is preached.

4. 📖 Key Verse

“Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.”

“For she has done a beautiful thing to me.” (vv. 5b, 10b)

5. 📝 Reflection

When I was young, I used to write a diary as part of my school homework. A diary is originally something very personal, but at that time the school assigned it as homework in order to help students develop the habit of journaling, and every Monday the teacher would check the entries from the past week. So although I did write in my diary, I remember leaving out anything I did not want the teacher to know and writing only formal and superficial things.

These days, many people actively share their daily lives through social media. They record and share moments of joy and sorrow, and others respond enthusiastically by clicking “like” on each other’s posts. Yet, when we look more carefully, many of those posts are ultimately meant to be seen by others. Moments people do not want others to know are usually left unposted, while only the parts likely to receive approval are selectively displayed. In the end, the goal is to gain positive reactions from others, not negative ones.

Dear beloved congregation, whom is our spiritual life really for? Are we perhaps presenting a spiritual image in order to be seen by others, or acting in ways that seek their approval? Like the chief priests and elders, we often make judgments and take actions while being conscious of people’s eyes. But Jesus desires us to judge and act like the woman who poured expensive perfume on Him—being mindful not of people, but of God. Will we behave like the chief priests and elders, or like that woman? My earnest prayer is that today our focus may rest not on people, but on God.

6. 💬 What does this passage speak to you today?

• Where am I most tempted to seek people’s approval instead of God’s?
• Is my faith becoming a performance, or is it flowing from genuine love for Jesus?
• What is one costly, sincere, and beautiful act of devotion I can offer to Christ today?

7. 🙏 Prayer

Lord, turn my eyes away from the approval of people and fix them on You.

Teach me to love You with sincerity, courage, and wholehearted devotion.

May my life become a beautiful offering in Your sight.

Amen.

Scriptures

📖 (Matthew 26:1-13, ESV).

1 When Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said to his disciples, 2 “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.” 3 Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, 4 and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. 5 But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.”

6 Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, 7 a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table. 8 And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? 9 For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.” 10 But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. 11 For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. 12 In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial. 13 Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”

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