christian living on Pleasing People

I once heard a sermon that compared believers to commercials for God. “And God doesn’t need any bad commercials,” I remember the preacher saying. It stuck with me, and from then on I often made decisi...

To bless is to bridge. A blessing is a bridge to belonging, built right in the place we feel separated from hope. Words of blessing bring us back to the beautiful truth of being human: we belong to on...

The Christian who cares only for God’s approval lives free of the tyranny of conformist pressures, relaxed under the steady direction of the God who loves us and gives himself for us. Those who try to...

Every human activity, except sin, can be done for God's pleasure, if you do it with an attitude of praise.

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Background Structure This Psalm of David is unique. “It is the only hymn in the Old Testament composed completely as a direct address to God.” [1] It e...

Leader: O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living thin...

Christianity can be such a pretty faith. God calls us to wonderful things, to noble deeds, and to be a people of love. We are meant to be kind, joyful, brave, and good. These are attractive qualities ...

Thomas Merton describes those who never experience the gift of a contemplative life. His explanation for why some people never experience this can be found in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation: [T...

[M]ost Christians attach their convictions to Christ personally. In other words, we form our convictions in order to please Jesus, not ourselves. Convictions do not express what we think or feel or li...

We have an outdoor church readerboard (yep, manual, press-in-the-grooves-black-plastic-letters) near a busy street that I enjoy changing every couple of weeks. The challenge of saying something meanin...

In almost everything that touches our everyday life on earth, God is pleased when we're pleased. He wills that we be as free as birds to soar and sing our maker's praise without anxiety.

Let us think often that our only business in this life is to please God. Perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.

I attended a gathering of givers where we took turns telling our stories. The words fun, joy, exciting, and wonderful kept surfacing. There were lots of smiles, laughter, and tears of joy. One older c...

Leader: May God be merciful and bless us. May his face smile with favor on us. People: May your ways be known throughout the earth, your saving power among people everywhere. Leader: May the natio...

Now peacemaking is a divine work. For peace means reconciliation, and God is the author of peace and of reconciliation. … It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the particular blessing which attache...

Life’s pleasures—success at work, a good meal, a beautiful song, satisfying sex, a splendid aroma—are sacraments, yes sacraments, of the new Heavens and earth.

The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified and exalted.

We must feel toward our people as a father toward his children; yea, the most tender love of a mother must not surpass ours. We must even travail in birth, till Christ be formed in them. They should s...

Following Dallas Willard’s line of thinking in  The Divine Conspiracy , we don’t believe Jesus is saying, “Be merciful and you will be blessed.” Rather, his idea is, “As a tender-hearted person you ge...

The climax of God's happiness is the delight He takes in the echoes of His excellence in the praises of His people.

When people commune with God the very sensation of life is transformed, so that they are equipped “to see what is most beautiful, to hear what is most harmonious, to smell what is most fragrant, to ta...

Therefore, beloved, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the d...

Christians should be as delighted in the things of sight and sense as God is himself, when at the instant of every creational act, he declares goodness to be observable, enjoyable and usable. Of all p...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Wisdom Song It is not too far a stretch to imagine an eager young person sitting at the feet of a well-seasoned elder and receiving the words of thi...

He has no design upon us, but to make us happy. . . . Who should be cheerful, if not the people of God?

Leader: Praise the Lord! Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who greatly delight in his commands. People: their offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. ...

Being a peacemaker is part of being surrendered to God, for God brings peace. We abandon the effort to get our needs met through the destruction of enemies. God comes to us in Christ to make peace wit...

Return, O Lord! How long? Have pity on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you h...

Praise generates more praise; glory adds to glory. Praise works by overflow and contagion; it invites others to join in.