God Pleasers: Choosing Him Over All Else by Innocent Mwangi Gathungu

"And lo a voice from heaven, saying, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17)"

I recently bought my son a pretty innocuous birthday gift. He just turned 11 this year and, as usual, was quite anxious to see what I had so beautifully wrapped in a shiny wrapper. From his expression as he tore at the wrapping, I could sense he was not prepared for what he was about to discover.

On this particular birthday, I wanted him to learn a vital lesson in life - that life is full of choices. Unsure of what to make of the words emblazoned on the small board that was my birthday gift to him, he nonetheless read them out loudly to the amusement of all: "Life is Full of Choices. Choose Carefully".

Although he politely said "thanks dad", it was evident to all that good words of wisdom was not what he was looking forward to as a birthday gift. But I had made my point: to succeed in life, one has to make smart choices. Today, those words of wisdom are proudly displayed on the wall of his bedroom. And this pleases me a great deal.

Lately I have been thinking about God and what I need to do to please Him. I have come to a point where I have considered everything in life and found it wanting. We are living in a "fast-and-furious" world where rapid changes and the busyness in our lives leave us with little room for God. And as technology and cares of this life continue to compete for our attention, we are steadily crowding God out of our lives.

The Bible says in Romans 8:8 that those who are in the flesh cannot please God. When we seek to gratify the desires of the flesh, we antagonize the Holy Spirit and end up displeasing God. Timothy (2 Tim 3:2,4) sums up the reason why we miss God by saying that "men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God'.

True happiness can only be attained when we put aside all else and start chasing after God. Even after acknowledging that we need prosperity, happiness, joy, good health, etc, we must nonetheless count these as secondary to our desire to please God. As a deer pants after the water brooks, a God pleaser is always thirsty - and only God can quench his thirst.

I believe that the highest compliment that God can give us while we are still in this world is to say that He is "well pleased" with us. As Jesus was being baptized at the River Jordan, God publicly declared Him; 1) His beloved son, and 2) that He was well pleased with Him.

To become God's beloved and to win His stamp of approval, we need to emulate His Son Jesus Christ; He whose life was dedicated to doing the will of His Father. Even in the face of extreme pain and anguish at the Garden of Gethsemane, He chose God's will to prevail over His (Luke 22:42). Jesus could have easily let the cup pass - abandon God's will and escape the pain. However, knowing that pleasing God counts for more than everything in the world, He allowed God's will to override His own.

Likewise, to really please God, we should abandon our selfish ambitions and start seeking to please Him. We cannot please Him when we are preoccupied with worldly pleasures, lusts, ambition, and many other vices that daily seek to crowd God out of our lives.

We please God by putting our trust in Him - having faith in Him. The Bible says in Hebrews 11:6 that without faith, it is impossible to please God. Because he was a God pleaser, Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son at God's command. Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego were ready to die rather than disobey God. Job, even at his darkest hour, refused to heed his wife's advice to denounce God.

What about Paul? He was daily subjected to beatings, thrown into jail countless times, but still held strong to the witness of the truth. Paul was a God pleaser par excellence - he lived and breathed the Gospel. Not even the fortified jail and the chains that strapped him to the ground could restrain him from pleasing God - he praised his way out of jail.

God pleasers cannot be restrained from praising God by circumstances. Whether rich or poor, their overriding ambition is to please God at all times. They do not go to God with complaints or questions as to why this or that happened to them. Rather, they go to Him in awe and praise, knowing that only God can satisfy their hunger and quench their thirst of Him. They daily chase after Him, seeking to know Him more, wanting to drink from His fountain. And their thirst for God is never really quenched - for after knowing Him on one level, they realize that there is still more of Him that they did not know. And as they continually chase after Him, it's a chase that never ends, but a chase that keeps on getting sweeter and sweeter as He continues to reveal Himself to them.

As we make choices based on our desire to succeed in life, we should not forget the fact that the very success of those choices depend on ONE prime choice - that of seeking first and foremost to please God. The Bible admonishes us to seek first God's Kingdom (Matt 6:33) and everything else we require will be given to us. It is the choice to please God by doing His will and trusting Him that will win us His commendation - not endless pursuits at self-gratification and selfish ambitions!

Irrespective of our circumstances, we must chose Him over all else and seek to do His will at all times. And when we are chained down in life's merciless dungeons, like Paul and Silas, we should sing praises to Him and behold the chains fall and the prison gates burst open!

God pleasers always get God's attention. Choose to be a God pleaser today.

About the author: Innocent Mwangi is a motivational and inspirational writer and speaker. His articles can be found http://www.realopportunity.org and on http://www.ssmk.net. You can get in touch with him on img@ssmk.net