Focus: Yield Self To Pleasing God!

Text: 1Jh.3:22

"We keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight."

Let me begin with a word by Paul Silway, who said, "Many believers' entire lives are reduced to nothing more than a sin management program, running the endless treadmill of trying to please God by doing more for Him or trying to sin less."

Central to pleasing God is enjoying Him and all that has to do with Him.

God is pleased when we delight in and enjoy Him, live by faith, obey His word, do His will, follow in His ways, and glorify His name. God is pleased when we delight ourselves in Him and let His light shine through us to others.

Pleasing God requires that we make Him our foundation and center. Faith is the means by which we please God. The Scripture says, "But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him" (Heb.11:6). The testimony of Scripture is that Enoch pleased God by faith, and his faith involved walking with the Lord consciously, constantly and consistently for 300 years.

We live in a world where pleasing God is not easy. In the process of pleasing God we pay a lot of price and suffer so much inconvenience. That is why Jesus Christ made us to understand that to truly follow Him we must deny ourselves and take up our cross. Simply put, pleasing God requires cross-bearing and self-denial. Paul says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service" (Rom.12:1). 

Pleasing God means loving Him enough to offer Him our Isaac, breaking the costly ointment on Him, deciding like David that you will not at all give the Lord that which costs you nothing, and like Jesus, ensuring that you do always those things that please Him (Jh.12:3; 2Sam.24:24; Jh.8:29). The Word says, "But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased" (Heb.13:16). No one can please God without making certain sacrifices. Pleasing God is wholly inconveniencing to the flesh. Paul says, "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom.8:8).

The obedience of children to their parents is well pleasing to God. Paul says, "Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord" (Col.3:20).

God pleasers are not people pleasers. Paul says, "But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts" (1Thes.2:4). Again, he says, "For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ" (Gal.1:10).

We please or displease God by what we give Him. Malachi says, "And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the LORD of hosts" (Mal.1:8). God is not pleased by our lip worship if our hearts are far away from Him. The Lord Jesus Christ reprimands His audience for calling Him, Lord, Lord, without doing whatever He says. 

God is opposed to and disgusted by vain worship. Doers of God's will are indeed pleasers of Him. True worship is of the heart.

How do you pray? What do you pray for? Is God pleased with the content of your prayer? Of Solomon's prayer, we read, "And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing" (1Kgs.3:10).

Finally, let me tell you that God is pleased to have you as His child. The Word says, "For the LORD will not forsake his people for his great name's sake: because it hath pleased the LORD to make you his people" (1Sam.12:22). Making us His children is most pleasing to the Lord. He delights in us - in His church. It pleases the Lord to bless you, for we read, "And when Balaam saw that it pleased the LORD to bless Israel…" (Num.24:1). Those who bless you are blessed, and those who curse you are cursed.

Knowing what pleases God and how to please Him, it is now up to us to yield ourselves to the daily business of pleasing God and staying in fellowship with Him. Pleasing God is our first priority. It is central and vital to our total wellbeing. 

The secret of pleasing God is a daily yielding of oneself to Him in all areas of one's life.

Like Paul, make it your goal to please God (2Cor.5:9). Live for God's applause, not for man's accolades! Thomas Chalmers puts it well, "May I feel the salutary lesson of indifference to the praise of men, and may all my anxiety be directed to the praise of God and the interests of eternity." A lifetime of pleasing God is divinely meant to bring us eternal bliss and ultimate pleasure. Pleasing God is a lifelong commitment.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter