To please someone means to delight, satisfy, or gratify. When our goal is to please God, then we begin to weigh all our actions in the light of: they will like or not those actions. And this is not something we do just for obedience. We make them with an attitude of love. There is a big difference between the two. If you have children, you know that they can obey you by taking out the trash, while they complain all the way. But if one morning the trash has been taken out just to please you, you know the difference and God too.
Sometimes we have misconceptions about what pleases God. We do not understand that even the smallest actions can bless God if we do them for Him.
For example, when I read the anecdote of Amy Carmichael, who says that she spent most of her life serving in India, she tells about a particular afternoon when she was in the orphanage she founded. It was time to sleep, and there were five babies who needed a diaper change, to be fed, cuddled and loved. Another woman was attending to them, but when the church bells rang, indicating that it was time for the meeting, she left the babies, took her prayer book, and said, "I must go to the chapel." Immediately, she hurried out the door , leaving babies in need of
care. And it was Amy Carmichael who stayed and fed, changed diapers, and snuggled and laid the babies. She knew the difference about being obedient and pleasing the heart of God. Doing what was most necessary at the time showing His love to those little ones, was what pleased the heart of God.
When I began to understand this difference, I asked myself, What would happen if I lived that way all the time? What would happen if you went through the filter and asked, "Does this please the heart of God?" Is not a new revelation, not for me and probably for you. It is possible that the desire began in the conversion and I have lived this way throughout my Christian life, wanting to please it. You know how it is. One day you really want to please him, and at another time we complain because we have to be obedient.
I think we are all "phased Christians." What I mean is that we tend to go through phases in our Christian life. Sometimes we are in the phase of obedience. At other times we went through the disobedience phase. Then there are those phases of discovery when we learn some great truth about God and suddenly everything becomes attached to that truth.
I believe that like all Venezuelan we have had to affote the economic situation of the country, I have spent many seasons without any money but God continually provided. And at a time in my life, I thought that faith was the best thing you could have in your Christian life. So what did he prove to everyone he knew to know if they had faith? I did not care if they had love or not, only faith.
But then I discovered love and so I went through that phase? After that came the phase of obedience. And so he continued.
After a while I began to understand that our Christian life is very similar to a plant to bring home to take care of it. You bring her home and say, "I know what this plant needs more than anything else in the world, and it's water." Then you give her a lot of water. Water in the morning, water at noon, water at night. Well, many plants have died from excess water, more than anything else.
So you go to the next phase. You say, "Oh, I know what this money needs-it needs light." So you put it in the sunniest place in the house. The sun hits the plant strongly all day. Well, a plant that gets a lot of light gets yellow leaves. Too much light can kill a plant. Then you say, "Earth! It's all you need-good land: "
The truth is that your plant needs all those things: air, water, light, and good soil, but it can not have all that and be excluded from the others. The real question is, what is the purpose of that plant? The purpose of the plant is to give you pleasure and to those who enter your home. The purpose of the plant is to make your home beautiful. Nobody buys a dirty old grass and brings it home and puts it in the center of the table.
