Tuesday, May 5, 2009

What pleases God?

How do you please God? I think we often treat God like a cosmic slot machine. If we pray the right things, then he will give us things. "Help me" is another favorite that we use a lot. I think we often confuse "help me" with "do it for me". God, why don't you just do it all and I will sit here content and praise you. This spot is nice to watch you do the things I think you should. Does it cross our minds that our purpose is to please God? We live surrounded by people selling us the thought that it is all about us. What matters is what we want and when we want it.

Sometimes I wonder if that is why serving others is so hard to do. It requires us to be about something other than ourselves. Even that we get wrong a lot of times because we see serving as a way to reflect how spiritual we are. All of the sudden what is suppose to be about focusing on others has become about what we get out of it. We help someone and look for the "thank you's" to validate what we did. Can we be content if no one knows what we do?

So back to where I started. What pleases God? Is it possible to please God without faith? Isn't that what we try to do. We focus on the things we can do and accomplish, but do you think God is waiting on us to start having faith in him and then we can really do something? What are you trying to do that you can't accomplish on your own? Are we living by faith as a church? At some point if you are living by faith, then you come to a jumping off point. That place where you aren't in control and you have to have faith. Are you pleasing God with your life?

No comments: