Go out and please God today

“Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God,just as you are doing, that you do so more and more” (1 Thessalonians 4:1).

Today would be a good day to head out the door and set out to please God. We know God has the capacity to be pleased by what we do because Paul said so above. We also know we are able to do something that actually gives God pleasure, because Paul said that, too. God is not an Immovable Object in the sense of an Impersonal Force, such as we find in Eastern religions. Our God is a Person (He is the original Person, in fact, of whom you and I are the derivatives), capable of a gamut of personal feelings. Throughout Scripture there are statements about his sorrow, pleasure, displeasure, holy jealousy.

There’s no secret about how to go out and please God today. Paul said you and I have already “received from [him] how you ought to” do that. Pleasing God has to do with exercising faith and love, increasing in these rather than slacking off, keeping your body in an honorable way in these perverse times, working hard, walking properly before outsiders—and any other command you come across in the apostles’ writings.

Let me end with one other exhortation from Hebrews to go out and please God:

“… without faith it is impossible to please him. … ”

The obvious obverse of that statement is that with faith it is possible to please Him. Amen. Let all our God-pleasing acts be done in a faith state of mind that believes every word God has spoken through His Son and the apostles and the prophets, as being more true than all other man-made words, reports, feelings, or expert pronouncements.

Go out and please God today. Without qualms. Without limit. Against such there is no law.