Thoughts on Pleasing God
The most common search engine phrase which leads people to this blog is ‘living to please God’ – not surprisingly since that is the title! But I have never yet written a post on it, and since it has come up a lot in my Bible reading and thinking recently, I thought I would.
For many years now my main goal in life, which everything else stems from, has been to please God. That is why I picked the title of ‘Living To Please God’, because I feel that describes who I am and where I am going – or at least where I want to go!
Why please God?
There is no point in trying to please God in order to be saved and go to heaven, because we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone, not through anything we can do.
We also don’t live to please God to earn His favour… because if we are Christians we already have it. Jesus died for our sins, and God has removed our sin from us ‘as far as the east is from the west’.
The reason I want to please God more than anything else is because He has done so much for me, by sending His only Son to die for me, and by forgiving me, and blessing me with so much. That’s why I love the line from ‘When I Survey’, because it explains in a beautiful nutshell why I live to please God: ‘Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all!’
The teachers at school who I respected and liked the most, I wanted to please the most. I would always try to do my best work for those teachers. In a similar but much greater way, I want to please God and obey Him the best I can because I love Him. When I stand before God one day, I so much want to hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant”.
Is is also God’s will for us to live this way, as I have just been reading in my Bible:
That should be our aim as Christians. Chuck Smith says, “Our chief desire should be to please God”.
How do we find out how to please God?
How to please God is a whole series in itself, which I may try to do at some point when I have more time for Bible study. But I think at the root of this is reading the Bible because it is from God, so as we read through it we will discover more and more of what pleases God. We also need to make the step of applying it to our lives as we read it.
Yesterday I started my study in Proverbs, and was delighted to read this:
So if you want to find out how to please God, Proverbs is a great place to start!
I also hope that this blog will be a way of showing how to live a life that is pleasing to God, as I am trying to share what God is teaching me about living for Him.
I hope that you will join me in wanting to live a life that pleases God. And the desire is the most important thing – we may fail in carrying it out, but we can just go to the cross, repent and get straight back up again because God is gracious and understands our failings.
What motivates you to please God? Do you have any thoughts on how we can get a greater desire to please God?
Linking up with:
Very interesting. I must admit I think of my life of faith more as a dance with Christ. Or as a conversation. I want to see his eyes on me, warm with love and affection and laughter, and so do not want anything–such as sin–to cloud that relationship.
Thanks for sharing that Anita. That is a lovely way of looking at it, and it is true that sin does cloud our relationship.
Rhoda, wonderful words. “‘Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all!'” I love this too!!! It really sums up the whole of our walk with Him doesn’t it!
Thank you, too, for joining in and linking up with the Koinonia community! So glad to have you!!
Thanks for visiting Chelsey! I saw your post in the Above Rubies e-mail so thought I would join in, always good to link up with other Christian bloggers 🙂 Yes those words do sum up so much! I’m going to get around to putting your link in the bottom of the post tonight too, hopefully!
Great post. I really enjoyed your article. Love the use of Scripture.
Hi Scott, thank you for visiting and for the encouragement.