Knowing you are pleasing to God is one thing; pleasing Him is quite another. There’s this little matter of our behavior. I will always love our son, Chandler; I may not always like what he is doing. It’s all about being and doing.
Knowing we are pleasing to God is something that takes place at the core of one’s being. God loves who we are. He looks at us and is pleased with what He made. But knowing we are pleasing to God is not a free hall pass from responsibility. It does not sanction bad behavior.
We can be pleasing to God and still do things that are not pleasing to Him. That’s because being pleasing to God has to do with who we are, not what we do. One is being; the other is doing.
Ideally, one should lead to the other. Realizing we are pleasing to God should make us want to please Him in everything. And that’s where we want to end up with these thoughts today. We want to find out what pleases God and do it. We want to not be just hearers of the word but doers of it also.
After all, it’s only right that we should want to please Him when we realize that we already do, without doing anything.
John Fischer The Catch 
Anonther very good Catch, that I enjoyed and will help me to draw closer to my Lord & Savoir, so thanx again brother John, appreciate it and you.
It has taken me years to deprogram from TRYING to please God. Please don’t misunderstand, I want to please Him, but I always tried to modify my behavior in the moral realm, thinking that’s what He wanted. I’ve grown to understand that what pleases Him is my faith and trust in who He is. This results in true transformation, not just a self-made behavior change that usually ends up with me feeling good about myself and what I’ve accomplished. Like you, I’m a recovering Pharisee.
“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Hebrews11:6
Hebrews 11:6
Nice meditation today, John (as always). Whenever I think about the topic “Being and Doing” I think about Thomas Merton’s extraordinary chapter by that title in “No Man Is an Island.”
Keep the faith,
Randall+
I like this one. Thanks
You realize you have opened a beautiful can of worms with today and yesterday’s catch, don’t you? It has taken me years to learn these truths and like the proverbial onion, I’m still peeling the layers of understanding back on these thoughts. That God that made all the universe is pleased with me. What an awesome thought. His love for us is beyond what we can even begin to understand.
The fact that his mercies are new every morning covers our feeble tries and failures at doing right and obeying. I’m not saying stop trying or stop obeying but when you do try and you fall flat on your face He is there to pick you up. I’ve been a christian forever and I still struggle with obeying. I adore God. I meditate on his love and yet I struggle. But I keep trying I keep walking toward him and toward obedience. We are humans and we are imperfect. But my Lord, He is perfect and He gives me His righteouness. Isn’t that amazing? Life is kind of like a game of Monopoly. But when you mess up in life you don’t have to go back to Go you don’t have to miss collecting the $200. Instead reach a hand up and take the Lord’s hand and he will put you back on your feet and you don’t have to lose your place. You are still on the journey.
John, Thank you for today’s and yesterday’s messages! They serve as another love letter from the Father reminding me of this heart truth that He has been leading me into understanding over the past 8 months or so. As someone with a life-long performance-orientation, I constantly find myself focused on “doing.” And when this is my focus and I base my “being” on what I’m doing, I wind up hurting Him, those I love, those around me, and myself. But when I can focus on “being” with Him and before Him, this informs and shapes my “doing” in amazing and surprising ways!
Brian
Thanks, John, for your simple explanation of the fact that……wait for it…..Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. When God sees us, He see’s the perfection of Christ. His final words on the cross, “It is finished!” says it all. Oh how I wish that were preached from the pulpit more often. If we heard it more, we would be more grateful and maybe attempt to obey His Word. I have been attending a Lutheran church for the last 12 years and had my eyes opened to the weight of the Law and the magnificence of the Gospel…..we hear both each week. If we just get told what to do all the time, without the knowledge that Christ fulfilled the Law perfectly in our stead, we more often than not experience defeat thinking that when we fail there’s no way back… or we question whether God cares about us. It is in a true understanding of the depth of our sin and our complete inability to please God without Christ that frees us to obey (Martin Luther said that)……without fear… even if we fail at it……and God knows we will. Thanks, again, for your thoughts.