Let us please The Lord

Jeremiah 17:7-8 (NKJV)

7 Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, And whose hope is the Lord. 8 For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the river, And will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf will be green, And will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will cease from yielding fruit.

The prophet offers a comparison of the blessings received by one who trusts in the Lord to a tree that is fed constantly with water and yields unending fruit. Neither heat nor droughts have power over the tree for it is always refreshed by the water which is close by.

In his book What God Thinks When We Fail, Steven C. Roy tells a fictional story about a young violinist who lived in London many years ago. Although he was a superb musician, he was deathly afraid of large crowds, so he avoided giving concerts. But after enduring criticism for his unwillingness to give concerts, he finally agreed to perform in the largest concert hall in London.

The young violinist came onto the stage and sat alone on a stool. He put his violin under his chin and played for an hour and a half. No music in front of him, no orchestra behind him, no breaks—just an hour and a half of absolutely beautiful violin music. After ten minutes or so, many critics put down their pads and listened, like the rest …. After the performance, the crowd rose to its feet and began applauding wildly—and they wouldn't stop.

But the young violinist didn't acknowledge the applause. He just peered out into the audience as if he were looking for something—or someone. Finally he found what he was looking for. Relief came over his face, and he began to acknowledge the cheers.

After the concert, the critics met the young violinist backstage …. They said, "You were wonderful. But one question: Why did it take you so long to acknowledge the applause of the audience?"

The young violinist took a deep breath and answered, "You know I was really afraid of playing here. Yet this was something I knew I needed to do. Tonight, just before I came on stage, I received word that my master teacher was to be in the audience. Throughout the concert, I tried to look for him, but I could never find him. So after I finished playing, I started to look more intently. I was so eager to find my teacher that I couldn't even hear the applause. I just had to know what he thought of my playing. That was all that mattered. Finally, I found him high in the balcony. He was standing and applauding, with a big smile on his face. After seeing him, I was finally able to relax. I said to myself, 'If the master is pleased with what I have done, then everything else is okay.'"

Who are we trying to please in life? Are we trying to please those around us, trying to please the world, or trying to please God who watches over us and takes care of us? Let us please The Lord, the one who helps us bear good fruit in our lives.

Spiritual milk

1 Peter 2:2-3 (NLT)

2 Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, 3 now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.

The apostle provides some sound and wise advice. Once a person accepts God’s gift of salvation they need to seek out spiritual wisdom to grow their relationship with God and Christ. God has been good to us and His Son has paid our debts for sin. Therefore we should seek them out through scripture study and prayer.

I have gone to church for as long as I can remember. I think being in the Sunday morning nursery at church was one way for my mother to get a break from me.  But then as I grew I went into Sunday school and began learning about The Bible. I remember memorizing Bible verses to earn a Bible, which I still have today.  It’s a little old and tattered, but it is a good reminder of where I first started to learn scripture.

When I was around eight years old I remember being in church service and telling my mother Jesus wanted me to go down to the front of the church to tell the preacher I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart. Being so young, my mother setup a meeting so we could talk with the pastor instead of letting me go then. The pastor asked me some questions about salvation and I gave answers. Then he turned to my mother and said, “He knows what he is talking about.”  So the next Sunday I went forward in church and told the church I wanted to accept Jesus into my heart as my Lord and Savior.

Then comes the part where I failed my responsibility. I wanted that relationship with God and Christ, but I didn’t quite understand how to grow it. I didn’t read The Bible as I should have. I didn’t have people around helping me learn in detail about The Bible. I didn’t grow my understanding of God and Christ’s love for me and others. Instead I kind of floundered along the way.

After I was married I got into a church that focused on studying The Bible. Suddenly a lot of questions I had were being answered. I grew in my knowledge of God and Christ and I began to grow again. Finally I was drinking the spiritual milk the apostle Peter referred to.

If we are to grow in our understanding of God and Christ we need to spend time in His word and spend time talking to Him in prayer. The study of scripture and personal time with God and Christ are two important ways to grow spiritually. Take the apostle’s advice above and crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation.

The Holy Spirit at work

Galatians 5:22-23 (NKJV)

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

The Bible says to love The Lord your God. Jesus also tells us in The Bible to love one another. Here we are told by the Apostle Paul that the fruit of The Spirit is love along with a set of qualities that reinforce love. There is no law that can stand against real love for God and others; for in love everything is made right.

It's easy to blame others (and thus justify ourselves) for our disobedience. But in the following quote, Thomas Merton identifies the key reason why we fail to experience the freedom and joy Christ offers believers:

It is not that someone else is preventing you from living happily; you yourself do not know what you want. Rather than admit this [and ask for God's help], you pretend that someone else is keeping you from exercising your liberty. Who is this? It is you yourself.   [Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New Directions, 2007), p. 110]

The Holy Spirit is there to motivate us to love, find joy in our lives that comes with peace and longsuffering. We find that we can supply kindness to others out of the goodness of our heart. Our faithfulness, gentleness and self-control allow us to hold onto these values and use them for not only the good of God, but for the good of ourselves. Is someone holding you back from living a happy life? If so, you probably need to look at yourself. For maybe you are not allowing The Holy Spirit to work in your life. 

Children love your parents

Proverbs 23:22 (NLT)

Listen to your father, who gave you life, and don’t despise your mother when she is old.

This proverb tells us that we should honor our father when we as a child are under his authority. A mother’s love for their child is a great love. She spends hours a day caring for the child, seeing to its needs and ensuring the child is cared for. Therefore just because we have become independent adults is no reason to let go of our love for our parents and despise them for they did they best they knew how to do.

Sheila Kissinger, a social anthropologist, writes in her book, Ourselves as Mothers: "Becoming a mother is a biological process, but it is also a social transformation, and one of the most dramatic and that a woman may experience. The home is supposed to be a haven of love and good feelings. Thus it comes as a great disappointment to many women when it proves not to be so for them. For home is also a place where the ugliest and most destructive emotions are experienced, where there is disturbing interpersonal conflict, and inside four walls these raw feelings are concentrated and mixed together as if in a pressure cooker. She hates what she has become. Happy as a woman may be to have a baby, and although she may enjoy being a mother, she must now pay the price of motherhood the total and virtual annihilation of self."

Being a parent can be a tough job. Often it means sacrificing a lifelong dream to become the caretakers of your children. And where do you find the training for this job? You learned things from your father and mother; if you were fortunate enough to have both a father and a mother.  Even then our parents were not perfect so some of the things we learned were flawed. And unfortunately those flaws can carry from generation to generation. We may have learned from books, but that doesn’t mean we can always apply what we have learned and integrate it into our lives. No, life is trial and error. It is hoping to do the best, it is trying to give a great effort, but it is also realizing there are times we will fail. And when we fail we try to make our failure right.

Through it all God is teaching you and your children. You may do something that one day your child comes to resents something you have always resented in your life. Just maybe they will break the cycle of a generational flaw and pass new hopes to their children. Maybe they can learn a new way to handle emotions, problems and such to take care of their life and do it according to how God would have them act. Children listen to your father, who gave you life, and don’t despise your mother when she is old for they both have their love for you.

The Shepherd

Psalm 23:1-3 (NLT)

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.

A good shepherd always provides for the needs of his sheep. He watches over them. He keeps them fed and watered. The shepherd is always on guard to ensure his sheep follow the right paths that are safe to travel. David understood this because he was a shepherd and he saw God as his shepherd leading him to good places.

There's a line in the Old Testament written by Isaiah that tells the result of God's gamble, (Isaiah 53:6): "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way." Although God has a right to own us because he created us, he gave us the option of freedom, and we all left. We chose sin and did not love him as he wanted to be loved. In response, he chose to send out his own son to look for us, to hunt us down, to find and redeem us at a terrible cost--the cost of his own life.

A shepherd notches the ear of a lamb born to his flock and has rightful ownership. That lamb deliberately walks away. The shepherd searches near and far to get that lamb back. A long time later, he finds not a baby lamb but a grown sheep for sale at an animal auction. The shepherd recognizes his mark on that sheep's ear. He goes to the auctioneer and says, "I can see the mark. That sheep is mine."

The auctioneer says, "Listen, you must bid and pay just like anybody else."

The shepherd bids and pays an outrageous price, far above any reasonable market value in order to get his lamb. He now has a double right to own this sheep: from birth, from redemption.

God has a right to own us as creator and because he has paid the blood of his own Son--an outrageous price far above our market value--in order to redeem us back again. [Leith Anderson, "The Lord Is My Shepherd," Preaching Today, Tape No. 136.]

God watches over us and even provided His own Son as payment for our sins. How dear we are to God, precious in His sight.  Let us love God in return and follow Him to green pastures that are good places for us to be.

God's good works in our lives

Romans 8:28 (NLT)

28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

Problems don’t go away just because you become a Christian, instead the Holy Spirit is there to help guide you through your problems knowing that all things, even problems, work together for the good of those who love God.

In his book The Divine Commodity, Skye Jethani shares a story from a trip he took to India with his father. While walking the streets of New Delhi, a little boy approached them. He was "skinny as a rail, and naked but for tattered blue shorts. His legs were stiff and contorted, like a wire hanger twisted upon itself." Because of his condition, the little boy could only waddle along on his calloused knees. He made his way toward Skye and his father and cried out, "One rupee, please! One rupee!" Skye describes what happened when his father eventually responded to the boy's persistent begging:

"What do you want?" [my father asked].

"One rupee, sir," the boy said while motioning his hand to his mouth and bowing his head in deference. My father laughed.

"How about I give you five rupees?" he said. The boy's submissive countenance suddenly became defiant. He retracted his hand and sneered at us. He thought my father was joking, having a laugh at his expense. After all, no one would willingly give up five rupees. The boy started shuffling away, mumbling curses under his breath.

My father reached into his pocket. Hearing the coins jingle, the boy stopped and looked back over his shoulder. My father was holding out a five-rupee coin. He approached the stunned boy and placed the coin into his hand. The boy didn't move or say a word. He just stared at the coin in his hand. We passed him and proceeded to cross the street.

A moment later the shouting resumed, except this time the boy was yelling, "Thank you! Thank you, sir! Bless you!" He raced after us once again—but not for more money but to touch my father's feet. …

This, I imagine, is how our God sees us—as miserable creatures in desperate need of his help. But rather than asking for what we truly need, rather than desiring what he is able and willing to give, we settle for lesser things. [Skye Jethani, The Divine Commodity (Zondervan, 2009), pp. 113-114]

We all face problems and troubles, but God has a plan for us; a plan to prosper us and a plan that will make Christ known to others. God can open doors to things greater than we can imagine. Pray that God would use you for His purpose that everything would work together for good for those who love The Lord.

Reach out to others

Proverbs 12:25 (NKJV)

25 Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, But a good word makes it glad.

This proverb tells us that untreated anxiety can lead a person into depression, but a good word can make the heart glad and steer it clear of depressing problems.

I once had a psychiatrist tell me that anxiety and depression are like two over lapping circles.  One circle is anxiety, while the other circle is depression. The area where the circles overlap is the area where anxiety and depression come together. For if a person is anxious for a long enough period they eventually move towards a feeling of hopelessness and depression. Their anxiety overwhelms them to the point they feel hopeless to do anything and they are now trapped by both anxiety and depression.

Likewise if depression continues long enough in a person’s life, they begin to feel anxious about their depression as though something needs to be done, but they are unsure about what to do. So anxiousness starts growing within as they dwell on the things they believe they need to do, but feel too depressed to take action.

Galatians 5:22-23 tells us - But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. When we allow God to work in us we can ease the troubled hearts of others. We can offer love, kindness, goodness and gentleness to guide those in distress to calm thoughts. We can offer them hope. Often many of us can share experiences we have endured and how God has seen us through troubled times and brought us into good times. So a good work can truly make the heart glad and steer it clear of depressing problems.

It is amazing what a kind and loving talk will often do for people. It can give them hope they did not see. It can help them know others have had troubles and survived. Reach out to others and help them in their times of distressed and you will be blessed for your actions.