Faith pleases God.


     Faith pleases God. It’s that simple really. It means that I believe what he said. The Bible is his love letter to me. It tells me so much about him. It also reveals a lot about who I am according to him. Often what God says about himself and about us goes contrary to what the world around us says. Faith is choosing to believe God over all other voices out there including my own. 

     Faith says I trust God over my own feelings and emotions. Faith says I’m going to follow God’s ways and not my own because it pleases him. We hear so much nonsense today even from the religious world about how if we trust God everything will turn out all right but that is actually not what scripture teaches at all. Just read Hebrews chapter eleven and you’ll see many of the heroes of the faith were martyred for their witness. Some stoned to death, others sawn in half, some hung, some beheaded but they all had one thing in common. They had faith and it pleased God.

     There are times when we will face backlash for how we believe. We see it happening more and more in our beloved America. Faith does indeed please God but it often infuriates those who hate truth. The Apostle Paul suffered much for sharing the gospel. He was stoned and left for dead. He was beaten 39 times with a rod on more than one occasion. He suffered hunger, prison, chains, shipwrecks and more. At the end he writes to his young apprentice Timothy that he had fought a good fight, he had finished his course, and he had kept the faith.

     Faith pleases God. It means I choose to believe God and His Word over everything else. Even if it brings me persecution I still believe. Regardless of how things turn out I still believe. There is only one that I choose to please because of his great love for me. I please Him by simply believing in Him. Faith pleases God.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hero or schmuck?

Image
     You ever feel like you’re all that and a bag of chips and then other days you feel you just wanna crawl under the covers? The struggle between insecurity and pride is real and more common than people would like to admit. So many things can affect how we feel about ourselves. Our emotions can fluctuate daily at times. Not getting enough exercise, sleep, nourishment, rest, or play can all have a powerful impact on our psyche. If we take meds we have to add in the effects or side effects that can play with our feelings.      As followers of Christ we are often told that pride is evil but actually it is a healthy emotion within limits. I firmly believe in taking pride in my work, or as a father being proud of my children but not in a bragging kind of way but in a grateful to God kind of way. Conversely humility is always lifted up as a commendable virtue until of course someone wants to turn you into a doormat.      What can help us find a g...
Read more

Cookies!

Image
 I made some chocolate chip cookies the other day and they were all flat and horrible. I’ve made chocolate chip cookies before many times so why the catastrophic failure this time? I thought I knew how to do it so I didn’t read the directions and just winged it. I had all the right ingredients in all the right proportions and even baked them at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes until golden brown. It turns out I missed a step in the preparations and ended up with my chocolate chip cookie craving unsatisfied. Directions. We sometimes don’t like to follow directions because we think we know better or maybe we think we can make it better by adding or omitting a few steps in the process. Like when we put something together from IKEA and we have a few spare parts leftover. Or we throw out the packaging and then go dig it out of the trash several times because we forgot something in the instructions. Life is too precious to leave it to chance. Especially since we have a life instruction m...
Read more
Image
     Birds of a feather flock together. Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are. So if your friends jump off a cliff I guess you’ll jump too? We’ve heard these sayings and more usually from our moms! Well mom knows best. Sometimes our kids would come home from school acting like one of their friends. My wife was the first one to point it out. She would say, “I want my daughter (or son) not this kid you’re pretending to be like.” I think often our kids didn’t even notice they had picked up bad habits until they were called out on it.      It’s not just kids because adults do it also. How would you define your five closest friends? It turns out that our close friends have a huge influence on our lives, attitudes, personal growth, habits, money, and so much more. When you hang around the wrong crowd it won’t be long before you’re doing the wrong things. Bottom line is most of us need constant supervision! So if we can so easily be influenced...
Read more