Pleasing God

I've been turning over in my head our perennial tendency as believers to please God.

It's not a bad thing - Prov. 16:7 holds out an enticing promise that for those whose ways please Him, their enemies will be at peace. Jesus gave an example of someone whose ways were always pleasing to God (John 8:29). Paul even writes that we should "try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord" (Eph. 5:10; Col. 1:10). There is much to commend the sense of feeling God's pleasure over our decisions and courses of action. We all want to hear Him say, "Well Done."

And yet ... something nags at me. Something tells me it is far to easy to have our focus be "pleasing God". Something tells me that the Pharisees too wanted to please God. So how can I bring the desire to please God into check, to avoid the legalism of the Pharisees? Should "pleasing God" be the motive that gets me through each day?

More and more, I'm thinking - probably not. Maybe it's just me, but living to please opens the door for me to despair when I've failed, and to live for the reward as an end in itself. Instead, I'm seeking to practice as a motive something I learned from our dog: delight in His presence.

Our dog loves nothing more than to be by us. He is 12 1/2 years old and feels every bit the old dog that he is. But he is faithfully up off his bed and excitedly greeting us at the end of the day. He literally lives for the times at night when we call him into our room to sleep next to us. While he sometimes is not pleasing to us in his actions (like finding him in a puddle of water today ... laying down) - he never fails to delight in our presence. And the one discipline that works faster than anything else is to put him away from our presence even for a few minutes. He quickly comes in line when it affects his closeness to us.

So I'm questioning if maybe that's more of the "pleasing" that God wants us to strive for. Desiring His presence so greatly, that we will put aside anything that affects the intimacy of the relationship, make "pleasing Him" more about Him than about the warm fuzzy I get when He pats me on the head. Sure, certain actions please Him. But if those actions are taken apart from a genuine desire for His presence, I'm not sure He's very pleased. The older brother in the story of the prodigal (Luke 15) did the right actions, but didn't truly enjoy his father's presence.

God doesn't want older brothers. I think what He wants are prodigals who can't wait to be with Him and who long to do the right thing because we delight first of all in Him and long to be with Him. He wants people freed from demons who refuse to leave the foot of the cross. He wants those who ignore the crowd and wash His feet with their hair, who love much because they are forgiven much. He wants people who will honor Him for His "scandalous grace" and who can't imagine life without Him.

When He is our all in all, we will find that sin can't stand in His presence. We'll do whatever we can to honor Him. And I think that He will find that very pleasing indeed.