4. Pleasing God…
We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. The way you live will always honour and please the Lord and your lives will produce every kind of good work.
Colossians 1:9-10
We urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live in a way that pleases God
1 Thessalonians 4:1
I like to please and this has been fraught with danger for me over the years as I have sought to please others. I spent many years trying to please my mother, mostly to no avail. Nothing I could do was ever good enough, and I felt like a failure. Let’s face it as human beings the art of pleasing one another is a difficult one to master and, more often than not we fail. How then, if we can’t please each other, can we expect to be able to please God?
It’s not that hard. God is our creator and our Father, and it is his very nature to be pleased by us:
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!
1 John 3:1
God loves us with perfect love, and he knows we will not always get it right but if our desire is to please him in all we do then we know that, because of his perfect love, we need not be afraid:
Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.
1 John 4:18
God’s plan for our lives is the best plan there could be. This plan is revealed to us through his Word and as he speaks to us individually. He whispers those plans in the stillness of a moment of quiet before him; he shouts them over the noise of disappointment and despair. They may be written on a wall (Daniel 5) or spoken through a prophet. They may be revealed through the passion to see change stirring within us that we talked about in the previous post. His plans for us reflect his perfect love for us and when we step into them, he is pleased.
Imagine how God felt when Mother Teresa stepped into God’s plan for her to care for the sick and dying in India. Or when Billy Graham took up the podium and literally led thousands to salvation. Or when my Indian friends provided food and other much needed supplies to people left homeless during a typhoon. How did he feel when friends brought me meals or did my ironing when I was sick? He was pleased because what they were doing was good and part of his plan for them – whether a big plan on the scale of Billy Graham or a smaller one on the scale of my friends – he was pleased and amen to that!
Prayer: Lord, thank you that it is so easy to please you just by stepping into the plans you have for me. And yet, in the midst of the noise of the world clambering for my attention or the noise of disappointment when it looks like I can’t please anyone, it can be hard to know that you are pleased with me. Give me the strength to rise above the clamour to please others and seek to please you alone in all that I do.
Amen
Action: Look to the day ahead of you. How will you please God? How will you be in his plan for you? What might you do differently or with a different attitude?
Journal your thoughts:
