One of my fears

So one of my greatest weaknesses as I have said before is my need to be a people-pleaser. I please people, often times at great costs, because I hate to think about them being frustrated with me in any way, shape, or form. So today as I was digging into Scripture I came across an interesting nugget in 1st Samuel chapter 3. In a nutshell, Samuel is basically a priest in training who gets called by God and hears a message pertaining to the judgment of Eli (current priest) and his household (who were wicked for their lack of regard, respect, fear and love of God). It is an extremely stern message (ie: judge his family forever) that shows the absolute hatred of sin that God has. Anywho, the thing that stuck out to me was the conversation Eli & Samuel have afterwards. It says Samuel was afraid to tell Eli the vision (No kidding! Who wants to deliver that message to someone?) but Eli forces him to tell (with a threat). So the text says, Samuel told him everything, hiding nothing from him. Now I know he was threatened, but I still admire the huevos he had in sharing everything - bad news and all. My people-pleasing would have kicked in and I am sure I would have sugar-coated that message enough to make Eli think he was about to receive a blessing. My point? Sometimes the truth sucks and is incredibly hard to hear. Sometimes we need to deliver some harsh sounding critique & words of truth to people who, chances are, not really wanting to hear it. But nevertheless the truth needs to be heard and we must constantly be willing to deliver the truth - hiding nothing - to people. I openly admit this is not something I am really comfortable with or even good at doing. Yet it is the only way towards healthy communication and in the end is the only thing that will truly help someone. Sugar-coating and people-pleasing gets a person nowhere, no matter how much they like hearing it.