Who Are You Trying to Please?

PRAY OVER THIS

“Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” 2 Corinthians 5:9-10

 

PONDER THIS

Some years ago, I heard about a young pastor who was hired by a church, and one of the ladies in that church said to him, “You’re going to have a difficult time trying to please all 300 of us.” He said, “Madam, there’s only One I’m going to try to please; His name is Jesus. If I please Him, that should be good enough for the rest of you.” Jesus is the One we serve. We don’t primarily serve other people.

Now, there’s only one question that you ask after you bow the knee to Jesus Christ and receive Him as Lord, Master, and Savior of your life. It’s the question that the Apostle Paul asked on the road to Damascus, “Lord, what do You want me to do?” (Acts 9:6). The best advice anybody ever gave to another person was the advice Mary gave that day Jesus turned water into wine. Mary said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it” (John 2:5). You’ll never get better advice than that. Ask Him today, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”

Have you ever asked, “Lord, what do You want me to do?” What makes us hesitant to ask this question?

How can you discern what the Lord would have you do?

PRACTICE THIS

Ask “Lord, what do You want me to do?” See what He brings to mind and consider it in light of His Word and the wisdom of other Spirit-filled believers.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

He Does All That He Pleases

Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Psalm 115:3)

This verse teaches that whenever God acts, he acts in a way that pleases him.

God is never constrained to do a thing that he despises. He is never backed into a corner where his only recourse is to do something he hates to do.

He does whatever he pleases. And therefore, in some sense, he has pleasure in all that he does.

This should lead us to bow before God and praise his sovereign freedom — that, in some sense, he always acts in freedom, according to his own “good pleasure,” following the dictates of his own delights.

God never becomes the victim of circumstance. He is never forced into a situation where he must do something in which he cannot rejoice. He is not mocked. He is not trapped or cornered or coerced.

Even at the one point in history where he did what in one sense was the hardest thing for God to do, “not spare his own Son” (Romans 8:32), God was free and doing what pleased him. Paul says that the self-sacrifice of Jesus in death was “a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). The greatest sin, and the greatest death, and the hardest act of God was, in some profound way, pleasing to the Father.

And on his way to Calvary, Jesus himself had legions of angels at his disposal. “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18) — of his own good pleasure — “for the joy that is set before him,” as it says in Hebrews 12:2. At the one point in the history of the universe where Jesus looked trapped, he was totally in charge doing precisely what he pleased — dying to glorify his Father in justifying the ungodly, like you and me.

So, let us stand in awe and wonder. And let us tremble that not only our praises of God’s sovereignty, but also our salvation through the death of Christ for us, hang on this: “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever he pleases.”

John Piper