Tag: abundant life

Living to Please God?: singing our joy back to God

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“As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.” (1 Thessalonians 4:1)

I was talking with someone the other day about this passage from 1 Thessalonians as a follow-up to my sermon on Sunday, “Holy Hope.” As we talked, they mentioned that the idea of living to please God sounded difficult and even painful. It conjured up the idea of living under God as a schoolmaster demanding perfection instead of a God inviting us to love.

When we think of living in a way that pleases others, there can be several shades of meaning. If I am a people-pleaser, that carries a negative connotation. It means I am trapped by other’s opinion, often contorting myself to fit others’ desires and aims for my life. In that context I am bound up and not free to be myself and live my life. However, in the context of a healthy relationship marked by love, seeking to please another person usually has a positive connotation. In that situation I am utterly free to totally be myself and yet simultaneously free to consider what brings delight to another person I dearly love. These two contexts are quite different.

Paul’s exhortation “to live in order to please God…[and] to do this more and more” arrives in a context of freedom. Because of God’s wonderful saving work in Jesus Christ, we have been set free from the need to please others by demeaning ourselves or contorting ourselves to fit others’ expectations. God speaks life to us in Christ and that life calls us to live liberated in our God-given identity redeemed in Jesus. This is why several times where this same verb form appears in Paul’s writings, living to please God is often in contrast with the idea of living to please people:

  • “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10)
  • “On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts.” (1 Thessalonians 2:4)
  • “Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.” (Romans 8:8)

When we live to please God more and more we are responding to the love of God, not twisting into some demand of God. Because God loves us more than we know and because we have been bought with a price, our lives are now liberated that we might live in a way that brings God the greatest joy as we rejoice in Him. In a sense, the melody of our life becomes a joyful echoing harmony to the loving melody God sings over us. When we read in Zephaniah 3:17 that God “will rejoice over you with singing,” that freedom in God brings forth joy in God through a loving life singing joy back over God.

Do we hear God’s joyful song over us? Do we know God delights in our joyful song back to Him?

The Demand of Jesus: we must die in order to live

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Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:37-39)

Jesus demands our first love and allegiance. He has not come to be one among many loves, but first over all loves. Even our familial ties—the closest of our relationships—must fall lower in priority than Jesus, who is Lord. It is not that Jesus wants to decrease our other loves, but that He wants them to find their right place in relation to the primacy of our love for Him. It is only in light of Jesus and our love for Him that all other people and things find their right place and our love for them is set in order.

Who or what do we love most in our lives? If the decision was before us and we had to choose between that person or thing and Jesus, which would we really choose? We may readily say it would be our Savior, but does our daily life, use of time and money, and all other pursuits show that to be true? Do the inner dialogues of our life reveal something to us about our love?

Jesus calls us to a sacrificial life in pursuit of Him. While this may sound counter-intuitive to the good life, sacrifice is essential to what is good. We all know this from our various life experiences. We know that pursuing a goal requires sacrifice. We know that loving another person requires sacrifice. Why would this be different in spiritual matters? The good life spiritually is one that is marked by Jesus’ Cross. It calls for sacrifice at the center of our being, a sort of death to self, which serves as a gate into the real, abundant life with God. As Jesus said, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). What we often call “life” is not truly life. It will not bring what we hope it will or, at times, what it promises to bring to us. And so, Jesus must be the touchstone of all existence for us, which requires first a dying to self and then a living in Him. When Jesus is that touchstone, we will begin to see what true life and love is all about.

Are we willing to “die” as we turn toward Jesus? What do we still grasp for desperately that we need to release so we can live in Him?

What is the Way to Real Life?: renunciation and realization with Jesus Christ

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Celtic Cross

I call on you, my God, for you will answer me;
turn your ear to me and hear my prayer.
Show me the wonders of your great love,
you who save by your right hand
those who take refuge in you from their foes. (Psalm 17:6-7)

Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:37-39)

To take refuge in God through Jesus Christ is to forsake all other “lives” so that we might truly live in Him. The things and people we associated with those other “lives” are radically revalued in light of absolute allegiance to Christ as well as the absolutely more true love found in God through Him.

We find that all other lives were not really life as be behold the glory of the Lord and step forward to follow Jesus. “The old has gone and the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17) “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

In our daily lives, we begin the day—and continue through the day—with renunciation and realization. By faith we renounce our selves as king and realize that God is King. We renounce our will for the day—whether good or evil—and realize God’s will for the day, which is supreme. We renounce our approach to others—whether well-intentioned or wrong-intentioned—so that we might hear and follow (realize) God’s approach to others. We die to ourselves, our possessions, our relations, our dreams—whether we evaluate them as good or bad in light of God’s revealed truth—that we might live to God in Jesus Christ. We live toward His ideal life for our, our relationships, our possessions, our dreams, not our own.

First the cross, then the crown. First renunciation, then realization. This pattern defines our living minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Any other way is not the Jesus way and, therefore, is not life. But here, in this way of the Cross, we will find what Jesus promised: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

A Prayer for Abundant Life in the Lord

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“God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.” (Acts 17:27)

Thank You, Lord, that You are not far from any one of us. Thank You for the promise of Scripture: “Come near to God and he will come near to you” (James 4:8). Thank You for being available to us.

Come, O God, and meet with us today. We look to You and reach out for You. The ways of this world cannot satisfy us, and even the most promising things do not bring the joy we hope they would. Often, we are left empty and confused by passing pleasures.

We long for a deeper, truer joy that can only be found in You. We resist the ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and turn instead to You and Your ways.

Teach us, Lord, the pathway to true joy and abundant life. We long for the abundant life and, even more, we long for You. Meet with us today, Lord, for nothing else will satisfy.

Amidst the activities of this day, please call us close to You. Give us ears to hear, eyes to see, a mind to comprehend, and a heart to fully receive all You are and all You have for us today.

||40days|| week six: live

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The||40days|| journey of Lent has taken us along the road of acknowledging difficult things in our lives, turning from them, listening to God’s voice, and then following Jesus, our Leader. This week, we continue the journey with a focus around the theme: ‘live.’

At times, it might be easy to mistake the journey of these ||40days|| as only difficult or painful. We might be tempted to view confession, repentance, and sorrow as ends in themselves. But that is not Jesus’ way. Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost in order to bring us back into life with God. We hear Him say these very powerful words:

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10, NIV)

Following Christ moves us through self-denial into deep and true life.Read More »