I represent
the many people who grew up with a desperate need and longing to please the
adults in my life. On the outside, this gave the appearance of being a good
kid. Who wouldn’t want children who were consumed with desperation to feel they
were pleasing their parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents, school teachers,
or club leaders? Children wanting to please? Sounds good, does it not?
Actually, it
does not. At least, it does not in the people-pleasing way that many children
have learned. The kind of desire I had to please adults was the sign that
something was broken, and I was trying to fix it. My modus-operandi for fixing
my broken soul was by being so good that some adult would finally be pleased
with me. I longed to see an adult give that smile, that direct look in the eye,
that lingering thoughtfulness, that showed that he or she had fully received my
gift, was pleased with what I had given, and wished I could know how special I
really was.
From my
childhood, I had a growing relationship with God. I had learned quite early
that God was watching me from his domain “up there”. I understood the gospel
while still an adolescent, and prayed the “sinner’s prayer” at the end of a
Sunday School class (although no one in the world knew that I had done so). As
a young teenager, I came to understand the “once for all” nature of Jesus’
redemptive work,[1]
and so “once and for all,” settled that I had a relationship with him that was
based on grace through faith,[2]
built upon the solid rock of Jesus’ death on the cross,[3]
his victory over sin and death, and his resurrection providing me with a living
Savior.
However, I
headed into this real and growing relationship with God with a totally wrong
understanding of what it means to please him. Reading that our prayers would be
answered, “because we keep his commandments
and do what pleases him,”[4]
sounded like one thing to me: keep the law, and please him through a perfect
record of obedience. If you’re good enough, he will answer your prayers.
In other
words, as I began growing in my relationship with God, I still lived under the
impossible weight of thinking that I had to please him the way I had tried to
please every adult in my life. It was all about the best behavior, being good,
trying harder, making up for the last screw-up, doing better next time, and all
the host of misguided and dysfunctional ideas associated with pleasing God.
When such a
people-pleaser-turned-God-pleaser read Scriptures like, “try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord,”[5] it
set into motion a frenzy of hopeless consideration of how a sinful little child
like myself could possibly find out what was “pleasing to the Lord.” And yet, there it was. Scripture was
exhorting me to “try” to do this. I
was to expend effort trying. Even if I daily felt like a total failure, I was
still to try. Or, so I thought.
Sadly, in my
younger years, I still lived with the blind, false, and childish notion that my
mud-pies and dandelions were far more tasty and beautiful than reality would
reveal. If trying counted, my trying had to count for something. I had to close
my eyes to my failures, and keep a list of my successes (meaning from a child’s
viewpoint, of course), and follow every disappointment with a renewed attempt
to discover that one thing I could do that would cause…
Forget about
it! There is no possible way that I could live such a good life before God that
I could do things that please him! That elusive smile of approval? Never going
to happen! That steady gaze of an adult eye that saw me, and took me in as
beloved? Not a chance!
Except that it
was mine. It took me a long time to see what God was showing me. It was not his
eyes that had difficulty seeing me as the beloved child I had been to him from
before the creation of the world.[6] It
was my eyes that could not see what was clearly revealed, that my heavenly
Father had loved me with an everlasting love,[7] had
revealed that love to me through the cross on which Jesus died,[8]
and was rejoicing over me “with gladness,”
quieting me “by his love,” and
exulting over me “with loud singing.”[9]
Over this
unnecessarily long journey, my life did not change from a desire to please God
to a freedom to give no thought to pleasing God. Rather, it changed from the
hopeless mindset of trying to please God through good works, and discovering
that I was pleasing to God by faith. As the writer of Hebrews recorded, “And without faith it is impossible to
please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and
that he rewards those who seek him.”[10]
The
declaration that states in the negative, “without
faith it is impossible to please him,” announces the wonderful reality that
with faith it is possible to please him. In fact, to be a bit more forceful,
with faith it is impossible not to please him. Faith, not our good works, is
what pleases God. Jesus has done the good works God requires, and now God is
pleased when we put our faith in his Son.
There is some
sense in which trying to discern what pleases the Lord means watching for ways
to live by faith instead of good works.[11] Pleasing
the Lord happens as we keep in step with the Holy Spirit by faith.[12]
We please him when we are the branches of the vine that simply remain in Jesus
by faith, and so bear much fruit to the Father’s glory.[13] Or,
as the writer of Hebrews stated in the conclusion to his chapter on faith, all
the people he mentioned were, “commended
through their faith.”[14]They
were not commended through the good works they performed, but by the faith they
had in their hearts that moved them to do the good works prepared for them.[15]
I recall a
time when I thought that Hebrews 11 was the “hall of fame” of the church. I thought
of the people listed as the “heroes” of the Christian faith. I couldn’t read
about their exploits without seeing it as the good works of people who pleased
God through what they did.
It was far too
long into my Christian life before I realized that “heroes of faith” was an
oxymoron, a logical contradiction. Faith did not make anyone a hero. Faith did
not make people look good. Faith was not good works in action. Faith made God
look good since he was the one doing the good works, and our faith simply
honored him as faithful. People joined God in his work, not because they were
heroes who wanted to display how good they were, but because they were so sure
that God would do the whole work himself that they could follow him by faith
into whatever he was doing.
Today, if you
feel in your heart a hunger and thirst for the righteousness of pleasing God by
faith, watch whatever you go through in the course of the day and see if you
can discern what faith would do in response to what God is doing.[16]
Faith will indeed do the good works God has prepared in advance for us to do,
but knowing that it is the faith that pleases God more than any good works
could possibly do.
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, Canada, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Romans 6:10; Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 9:26; 10:10; Jude 1:3
[2]
Ephesians 2:8-9
[3]
Philippians 2:8
[4]
I John 3:22
[5]
Ephesians 5:10
[6]
Ephesians 5:1-2 speaks of Jesus’ disciples as “beloved children,” and Ephesians
1:3-14 shows that God’s determination to have people like me as his children
was settled prior to creation. In other words, I was a beloved child in God’s
mind before he called space, time, and matter into existence. Everything he did
in history, and everything he gives us in his word, is to show us how we can
know him as the Father of timeless love.
[7]
Psalm 103:17; Jeremiah 31:3; Romans 8:31-39
[8]
Romans 5:6-8
[9]
Zephaniah 3:17
[10]
Hebrews 11:6
[11]
Romans 3:28; Galatians 2:16
[12]
Galatians 5:16, 25
[13]
John 15:1-11, especially 15:8
[14]
Hebrews 11:39
[15]
Ephesians 2:10 speaks of the good works that come out of our faith in contrast
to the faith that saves us without good works as stated in Ephesians 2:8-9.
[16]
Jesus gave us a very clear example of this in John 5:1-47 when he healed a man
on the Sabbath, got in trouble with the religious elite (that whole thing about
not expecting to please many people while seeking to please God), and then
explained how he was doing the same works the Father was doing. Jesus’
explanation of how he recognized his Father’s work, and always joined his
Father’s work, is a great encouragement to our faith that we can do the same in
the things we face each day.
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