Series: From Pastor’s Desk Number: Vol. 14, No. 11
Beloved: grace, mercy and peace to you without measure from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. I am delighted to welcome you to another week of July 2025. My prayer is that God will daily equip you with everything you need to please Him in all ways. Amen.
As we are told in the bible, it is only through faith that we can please God. But why do we need to please God? The reason is that He is the creator, owner and judge of our lives. If there is anyone, then, that we need to please, it is God. And if we are not pleasing Him, we are defeating His purpose for creating us. So, all we can expect is eternal condemnation.
But then, as I already pointed out, it is only through faith in God that we can please Him. Look at what the bible says about that: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6NIV)
Now observe that the bible does not say, “Without faith it is difficult to please God.” That will mean that even if you do not have faith in God, you may still be able to please Him, if you try hard enough. But that is not what the bible says. What it says is that without faith it is not at all possible to please God.What, then, is faith in God?
First, it means taking God seriously. It means to accept whatever God says to us about Himself, about us and about life generally as the truth that we must act upon. And anyone who is not living on this basis cannot please God at all, regardless of how good he may appear to others. He is just doing his own thing.
Second, faith in God means to rely on Him absolutely. And why do we need to rely on Him absolutely? It is because He is the source of every good thing we need to be all that we have been created to be in life. To have faith in Him, then, means to live with a recognition of the fact that we cannot do anything we need to do or have anything we need to have in life without Him.
Anyone, then, who is not living on this basis is not pleasing God, regardless of how beautiful his life may appear to be. The person is just doing his own thing.Now if someone becomes as successful as anybody can be in this world and is not pleasing God, what has he really accomplished? Nothing! Why is that so? It is so because it is only those who live to please God that will forever live with Him in His eternal kingdom.
Those who do not live to please Him, who are simply doing their own thing, can only end up in hell, away from Him forever.If we, then, do not want that to be our experience, we must take our faith in God seriously.
We must take whatever He tells us seriously. And we must rely on Him only for everything we need in life. That was how our Lord Jesus lived when He was here on earth. He took God seriously by always doing only those things that pleased Him (John 8:29). He also relied on Him for everything He needed to succeed in life (John 5:19). And when His time was done here, He was received by the Father to sit at His right hand.
May we also be received by Him to occupy the places He has prepared for us in His eternal kingdom when our time here is done, as we live as Jesus lived, by faith in God. Amen.
Have a lovely week.