Two Roads: Please God, Or Trust Him?Muestra

Many of us are all too familiar with the experience of Christianity described in the video. We try to perform for God, try to keep Him pleased with us, while feeling like He’s getting farther and farther away as we continue to struggle and sin. Pleasing God sounds like a good primary motivation, so why does it lead to this place of hiding, isolation, and pretending?

There’s an incredible phrase in Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” The word “faith” is the noun form of the word “believe” or “trust.” Thus, the issue of pleasing God is inextricably bound to trusting Him. What the author of Hebrews is saying is that pleasing God is the result of trusting Him. There is nothing that we can “conjure up” to please Him that is not based upon who He is and what He has already done in and for us. 

Pleasing God is a good desire. It just can’t be our primary motivation, or it’ll imprison our hearts. What we mean here by “primary motivation” is "that which is the driving force of our very hearts." If our desire is primarily to please God, we will be the initiators. We will end up manufacturing all sorts of ways to do this, without trusting in the God we’re trying to please. We will pretend like we're doing better than we are, and we will strive to be "good enough" (or sin little enough) to please Him. This leads to a community where there is a hierarchy of the "better Christians" and "worse Christians," where struggles and vulnerabilities are hidden, and where eventually people burn out from trying to please God by their own efforts. We do this despite the clear teaching that nothing we do apart from trust pleases Him. Indeed, James observes that “whatever is not of faith [trust] is sin.”

Pleasing is not a means to our godliness, and it was never meant to be. It’s the fruit of our godliness, for it’s the fruit of trust. Trusting is the foundation of pleasing God.