Pleasing the Lord in Every Aspect of Our Lives
To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy; but to the sinner he gives travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him who pleases God. This also is vanity and a chasing after wind. — Ecclesiastes 2:26
That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. — Colossians 1:10
Author
Dr. Roberto Miranda
Summary: To please God, we need to know His will. The Bible contains the knowledge we need, and the Holy Spirit gives us wisdom and discernment to apply it to every decision; therefore, we must maintain continual fellowship with Him. That knowledge must be expressed in holiness and exemplary conduct, rather than being limited to a profession of faith, the accumulation of intellectual knowledge, or empty rituals. As followers of Jesus, we must abandon habits and thoughts that are contrary to His character, walk as He walked, and embrace His values. Our goal is to please Him in everything, reflecting generosity, forgiveness, compassion, and patience in marriage, in our relationship with our children, and in every aspect of life.
To please God and to conduct and behave ourselves as God expects us to, we need a knowledge of the Will of God. The only way we are going to please the Lord is if we are clear about what God wants from us.
That is why it is so important for us to study the Word of the Lord, because the Bible contains all the knowledge we need about what the Will of God is. But God also enlightens us inwardly through His Holy Spirit and gives us the wisdom and discernment to know what He wants for us in every decision and at every moment of our lives. That is why we must remain in continual communion and communication with the Holy Spirit, so that God may continually correct us and center us in His Will in every decision and every circumstance that we have to deal with or relate to.
So this idea that we need that revelation from God is interesting, but it is so that we may please Him and behave in a manner worthy of the Lord. This speaks to me about the importance of holiness in the Christian life as well. God expects any knowledge we acquire to be manifested in a life that is pleasing to Him. So many believers think that the Christian life is simply a matter of making a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and then living carelessly and committing all kinds of errors and sins, because, after all, if we are already saved in Jesus Christ and God saves us and understands us, then why worry much about the way we live?
It is important to note this continual insistence in the writings of the apostle Paul and the other apostles that we are called to a higher life, a life of exemplary conduct. Paul puts it in terms of “as is worthy of the Lord”; in other words, the Lord Jesus Christ deserves the highest standard of conduct, and God expects that when we enter His ways, we will set aside all those practices, customs, habits, and patterns of thought that do not reflect the character and values of our Lord Jesus Christ.
If we are true followers of His, we must walk as He walked, the Word says. We must think as He thinks, we must feel as He feels, and we must hate what He hates and love what He loves. That is what knowledge is for; that is what the revelation of God is for. It is not simply to puff us up intellectually or to accumulate a body of theological or intellectual knowledge, or simply to carry out external or empty rituals, but to live a life that pleases the Lord and is worthy of Him, a life that reflects the values of the faith.
Through that simple expression, “that you may walk as is worthy of the Lord,” Paul is referring precisely to that life of holiness, that life of exemplary conduct. And he says: pleasing Him in everything. Our goal should be to please the Lord in every aspect of our lives: our marriage and how we treat our spouse; our fatherhood or motherhood and how we relate to our children; what kind of parents we are; and whether we exemplify generosity, selflessness, forgiveness, compassion, and patience.
These are the values that characterize Jesus Christ, they are the values that please Him, and they are therefore the values that we must adopt in our lives, asking the Holy Spirit to fill us with the knowledge that enables us to live in that exemplary manner. So may God, through this meditation, imbue us with that central idea: that the knowledge of God and the interventions of the Holy Spirit are intended to make us exemplary men and women who, in everything we do, think, and say, exemplify the character of Jesus and are pleasing to Him. God bless you, and until our next meditation.