How Do We Please God?
How Do We Please God?
Last week we spoke about how to comfort people, how to make them rejoice and please them. This week we wish to speak about how to please God…
How Do We Please God?
We strive with all our effort to please people, provided that this does not conflict with pleasing God. Therefore the apostle rightly said: “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men” (Rom. 12:18).
For there are situations in which it is not possible to please all people. You may at times bear witness to the truth, and people grow weary of your testimony. Your honesty may not please them… You may sometimes have to rebuke works of darkness, and those who walk in darkness will not be pleased with you…
People may be pleased if you flatter them or go along with their conduct, or share in their sinful deeds that trouble your conscience, while the Scripture says: “Nor sits in the seat of the scornful” (Ps. 1:1).
The important thing is that your pleasing of people be within the circle of your pleasing God.
For you cannot please people at the expense of God or at the expense of your conscience. Concerning this the apostle said: “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10).
Pleasing God is the foundation, and pleasing people is conditional upon pleasing God. Otherwise we must listen to the Lord’s words: “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matt. 10:37), and to the saying of the apostle: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Since this is so, how then can we please God?
The first and most important means of pleasing God is love.
All your struggle in your spiritual life, all your prayers, all your desires should be directed toward acquiring the love of God.
If you reach the love of God, you have reached everything. Then you will find all the commandments easy, and you will find delight in all spiritual things. Your love for people will become something natural and spiritual, requiring no effort…
Undertake a process of emptying: empty your heart of every love that conflicts with the love of God, and fill your heart with the love of God alone. Your abiding in God is your abiding in His love. “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16). If you love God, you please Him and thus keep His commandments.
And the fulfillment of the commandments becomes love, not mere duty…
Here we see that pleasing God also comes through repentance.
True repentance is driven by love. It is the replacement of one desire with another—the abandonment of the desire of the world for the sake of the desire for God.
Thus repentance is not merely the forsaking of sin or hatred of sin; all this is negative. The positive aspect of repentance is the love of God. The love of God burns away every sin in your heart and leads you to repentance.
Wretched are those who have left sin but live in a void without the love of God… How easy it is for them to return to sin again.
Therefore, leading people to repentance must come through planting the love of God in their hearts, so that the pleasure of sin fades away and is replaced by the love of goodness and the delight of a beautiful life with God.
When the Lord reproved the angel of the church of Ephesus, He did not rebuke him for a sin, but because he had left his first love…
When a person loves, he is ready to give everything, even himself. And when he fulfills the commandment, he does so out of love, not mere outward formalities. He does not find the commandment burdensome.
When David speaks about the commandment, he speaks of it in love: “Your words were found, and I ate them… I rejoice at Your word as one who finds great treasure… Your testimonies are my delight… my meditation…” (Ps. 119).
Even the word of God that reproves you and makes you weep, you rejoice in it: “For whom the Lord loves He chastens” (Prov. 3:12). Thus you rejoice in every affliction and see it as beneficial to you.
If you love God, you do not complain, nor murmur, nor become irritated. You do not say that God has abandoned you; rather, you are continually rejoicing in the Lord. This brings us to the subject of trust in God.
If you wish to please God, you must trust Him.
Trust in His love, in His dealings with you, and in His good governance. Never doubt God, but say: “The bitterness that the Lord chooses for me is better than the honey I would choose for myself.”
Through trust you live with God a life of complete surrender. In surrender He senses your sonship and obedience, and He can lead you without hindrance from your own will.
Through trust you live with the Lord in continual joy.
You rejoice in Him as the Doer of good; everything He does with you must be good. Even if you do not see matters this way, the fault lies in your understanding and perception, not in God’s work and wisdom.
If you are attacked by doubts, cry out to God: Grant me spiritual insight, that I may see love in all Your arrangements and wisdom in all Your dealings with me. Whatever You do with me, I will seal with the words: “All is for good.”
Yes, “All things work together for good to those who love God” (Rom. 8:28).
You please God through love, repentance, trust, through faith that fills you with joy. You also please Him through humility.
The proud person reviews God’s works and judges them by his own concepts. The humble person accepts everything from God with contentment and trust. Who am I—dust and ashes—to debate the works of God, which are beyond all searching out?
The humble person has God with him in all his conduct, repeating the words of the Virgin: “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
The life of surrender is acquired only through trust and humility…
What You desire, O Lord, not what I desire… Your wisdom, O Lord, not my ignorance. Of myself I understand nothing…
Thus the humble person renounces himself in order to live in God, as the apostle said: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
As long as a person clings to himself—to his wisdom, his understanding, his rights, his desires, his self-confidence—he cannot please God.
I want, O Lord, to deny myself in order to live in You and by You. I want to lose this life that I may find it in You, as You said: “He who loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39).
I lose this sinful self to find a self in Your image and likeness.
I lose a self dependent on its own abilities to find one dependent on You.
I lose a proud self to find a gentle and humble heart like Yours.
Ask yourself, my brother: Are you pleasing God? Or pleasing people? Or pleasing yourself? May you sacrifice pleasing yourself for the sake of pleasing God.
And let pleasing people be within pleasing God. Always take the lowest seat—not in place, but in rank. When you comfort God and comfort people, you too will feel the rest of labor and its sweetness, as the fathers tasted the sweetness of asceticism and as the martyrs tasted the sweetness of suffering.
If you believe in Jesus crucified, ascend the cross for the sake of God and people, as He did. Then you will feel a rest—the rest of sacrifice and redemption.
When your love is perfected toward all, you will cry out from your cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30), “I have finished the work which You have given Me to do” (John 17:4). And God, who does not forget the labor of love, will grant you the grace of ascension and sitting at His right hand, just as He granted you the blessing of the cross.
Do you seek the rest found in labor, or do you suffer the weariness of false rest, far from sacrifice?
Labor, then, for the sake of God and people. Leave everything that hinders your love for God. Take up your cross and follow Him. Give everything for His sake and for the sake of His children—even yourself.
If you give yourself, you will find it beside Him on the cross, and you will hear Him say to you: “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).
If you cannot ascend with Him upon the cross, ask yourself: How shall I be glorified with Him if I do not suffer with Him? How shall I live with Him if I do not first die with Him?
Have you pleased God through love, repentance, trust, a life of surrender, labor, sacrifice, and ascending the cross?
There are other matters in pleasing God for which time does not allow us to recount them all. What matters is that we have the desire to please God.
In desiring to please God and to give for His sake, remember how much He has given for you and for your salvation. Remember the apostle’s words: “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
For better translation support, please contact the center.
