1 Thessalonians 4:1 “Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God.”
As we make daily decisions, we need a filter. One of the most vital filters for our decision-making is the question will this please God? While there is peer pressure to please a friend and/or family pressure to please a parent or grandparent or a spouse, maybe to please a boss, and even personal pressure to please oneself, the top question remains: does the action you are getting ready to do please God? Earlier in my walk with God, I had a poster that read, “If you please God, it does not matter who you displease, and if you displease God, it does not matter who you please.”
Our verse has the Apostle Paul pleading that we abound – increase – grow in pleasing God. Hear his passionate appeal in we urge and we exhort.
This idea of living to please God is reinforced by several other Scriptures.
2 Corinthians 5:9 says, “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him.
In Colossians 1:10 Paul prayed for the Colossians to walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him.
In 1 Thessalonians 2:4 Paul said that he himself lived to please God. “But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.”
In 2 Timothy 2:4, Paul reminds Timothy that “No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.
What does it look like to please the Lord? Scripture gives two significant things:
1) Live by faith. Hebrews 11:6 says it is impossible to please God without faith. Heb. 11:6 “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”
2) We obey what He says. 1 John 3:22 says, “We keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.”
Is it your ambition in life to please God? Are you abounding in pleasing God?
“If you please God, it does not matter who you displease, and if you displease God, it does not matter who you please.”
Continue Strong pleasing God,
And remember to DATE The Word