The Power to Please God!

Something that has been resounding in my head all week is a little sentence I either read or heard someplace earlier this week and that was (and I cannot quote it) that when Jesus died for us, His death not only saved us from punishment for our sins but it also gave us the power to please God.

The Power to Please God… something about that concept really stuck with me. It kept going around and around in my mind. What an incredible power that is. When you think of all the powers that Superman has… leaping tall buildings, dodging bullets, seeing through stuff – none of that can compare to the power to please a being who is all-powerful! The power to please the Omnipotent. The power to please one who has all, knows all, is all! That is an incredible power. Just think of what that means! Do you realize that God actually makes Himself vulnerable to us!? WE are HIS weakness! He chooses to allow us the power to control His emotions. I don’t mean control them as in manipulate robotically, but I mean that He has let down His barriers, chosen to make Himself weak for us.

In our Thursday Bible study at church we were studying Genesis and the world right before the flood. The focus was on how sorry God was to have ever made us because man was so completely evil. God was sorry He made us and was going to wipe us off the face of the earth. Fortunately Noah found favor with God. I asked the Pastor why, if God knew what was coming, He bothered to create us in the first place. If He knew He was going to be sorry He made us, why the heck did He go through with it. Almost before the words were out of my mouth I knew the answer. It was His boundless love for us. He knew He was going to be sorry He made us, but He did it anyway because He loves us so much. In spite of all the annoyance, misery, agony, grief and sorrow we put Him through, He still chose to create us.

Imagine if you had a bunch of children and you knew that some of those children were going to actually kill some of your other children. Imagine that some beat up others. Maybe you would feel sorry you gave birth to some of those children too, just as God is sorry to have created us. But God loves us so much that He did it anyway!

You might wonder, then, why didn’t God make us “better?” Well… He did. WE were the ones who chose to eat the stupid apple! All God did was give us FREE WILL. And the free will had to be a component that God placed in us, otherwise we could never really love Him or show love to Him because if we didn’t have the option to disobey and NOT love God, what worth would our obedience and/or love have to Him anyway?

So, back to the Power to Please God… I’ve been walking around all week sort of catching my breath every time I think about this. I’m awed by this fact, by the fact that God has actually endowed us with this incredible power. We have the power to make Him smile. And this sudden knowledge fills me with more happiness than just about anything in my life, actually! I – me… incapable, shy, not-terribly-bright, not-exceptionally-special, pretty ordinary, middle-aged, still sort of chunky, middle-of-the-road, 5’ 3” me… I can please GOD! That’s an overwhelming piece of knowledge. That is a better power than any of the other cool powers I can think of! So I’ve found my prayers this week have been centered on asking Him to help me know how to please Him and then helping me to actually do so. And I honestly am not focused on that for “brownie points” or to gain favor with God. Favor with God is a good thing, but the idea of just making Him happy, of having the ability to please the LORD, is so much more exciting – of being like Noah and having God find favor in me – the idea of pleasing God whom I love so much, the privilege of being able to please this being who has it ALL – now THAT’S extraordinarily exciting! THAT is a gift that I didn’t even realize Jesus had given us.