Pleasing God

Pleasing God

“ But without faith it is impossible to please him; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Hebrews

11:6

I have listened to many preachers tell their congregation all the reasons why their prayers are not getting answered. Theses reasons usually have to do with disobedience or sin of some kind. These sermons sound logical and make for good preaching. Many members of the congregation will go home and will prepare to fight another battle against the sin in their life. There are also those who will leave the church thinking, “what's the use?” I've tried so hard to conquer the sin in my life but I never seem to be able to overcome it. Some will even leave church permanently because they are tired of getting beat up every Sunday. They often get beaten up enough by life the other six days of the week and don't want to feel bad about themselves on Sunday also. The Bible says:

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins , and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I John 1:9

The fact is we have been forgiven our sins by the finished work of Christ on the cross. God does not see the need to punish us some more. Does this mean that sin is a good thing and that we shouldn't worry about it? Absolutely not. Sin itself, usually by natural law or the law of cause and effect will have its own negative consequences. But it is not God punishing us because he is mad at us.

It is wonderful that we are able to please God by our faith. To have this kind of faith we must believe that God has our own best interests at heart and does not want to hurt us. We must also believe that He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek after him. How do we seek after him? I don't believe that this is accomplished by seeing how many church activities and conferences that we can attend. There is nothing wrong with these things but I believe that God wants us to spend some personal time with him even if it is only for a few minutes per day. This does not mean that we have to have read a certain number of chapters from the Bible or that we have uttered a certain type of prayer. At these times God just wants to be close to us and to find out how we're doing. He is just waiting for us to give him an opportunity to be part of our daily lives.