I was in my early 20s, working at my first teaching job, and not living my life God's way. Raised in a Christian home, I had experienced the satisfied life saturated in God's will, so the emptiness inside me was unmistakable.

In my attempt to fill that emptiness, I started volunteering on Thursday evenings at the nursing home near my apartment. It began with me bringing materials and doing a craft with the ladies there, but before I knew it, hymns, Bible verses--and even prayers--started making their way into our time together. Despite our differences in ages, challenges, and life experiences, songs and Scripture seemed to be our common place and a large part of the foundation in each of us. I didn't look forward to the smells or the atmosphere in nursing home. But invariably, though I often forced myself to go there, I floated home. I received more than I gave, and somehow I knew I was in the right place.

I felt a similar reaction nearly 30 years later each time I met with two baby Christian women I mentored. This time I was living my life God's way. Though sometimes I regretted the committment as I remembered other things I could be doing, I invariably floated home when I recounted the ways the Holy Spirit had guided our time together. I knew I was in the right place, and now I realized it was right and pleasing to God.

Today, it's the girls' home where I go to teach a weekly Bible study that brings all these feelings back to me once again. It's usually only five or six troubled girls who sit with me around a table as I share with them something God has taught me. They let me into their hearts and talk openly about their lives. Sometimes, I don't want to leave the presence of these special young women, and I certainly don't want to leave the special presence of the Holy Spirit I feel.

I have spoken before as many as 15,000 women. I have published books and been a guest on many radio and TV shows. But nothing, NOTHING compares to the quiet pleasures I have discovered in those places only God and I knew about. Where I was pleasing to Him. Where I sought the approval only from my heavenly Father. Where His name--not mine--was lifted up.

Perhaps your life feels unapplauded and unnoticed. May I challenge you to find that place of quiet pleasure before God. Where is that location God is leading you where you can quietly share His guidance? Who is that person or persons who is waiting to experience God's love through you?

Don't do it for the glory, flattery, or self-adulation. You won't find it there. It's too special, too quiet, too pleasing to God to mar it with shared admiration.

Instead, you'll have to wait and receive the glory in heaven. I have no doubt that God is keeping track in a special place of all the things we do here without seeking man's applause. I'm certain He knows by time and location the people you have reached for Him.

But in the meantime, bask in that quiet pleasure. Go where He leads you, do what He tells you, reach who He brings you. Then look up and Him and smile. You know and He knows. That's all that matters.