On Pleasing God

He never saw death.  That blows my little mind to pieces.  Enoch walked with God.  He pleased God.  He was taken up to be with God.

He simply didn't have to take the usual route of death to get there.

What a detour.  I am slightly jealous.

I guess we are all looking at ways to be the model Christian.  I mean, who knows, if you please God, then maybe He'll beam you up like He did with Enoch.

But, after thinking about what it means to please God, I realize it isn't so much what we do as it is who we are.  Or maybe, Whose we are.

Enoch was "translated" which means he was transferred from one location to another.  One moment he was walking the dusty path of earth and the next the golden streets of heaven.  All we know is that he walked with God and that his testimony was this:  he pleased God.

To please God is "euaresteo" in Greek and it means to be fully acceptable before Him...to be fully agreeable and to gratify entirely.

I think the key for us is the blood of Jesus.  The sacrificial blood makes us fully acceptable before God the Awesome.  He can now look at us and be gratified.  I think He even smiles.

The verse right after Enoch pleasing God is our key verse. This is all in Hebrews 11.  It says that without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he that cometh to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. 

The key to pleasing God is faith.  A life of walking with Him because He is the only One worth walking with.  A life of abiding.  Rest.  Intimacy.  Trust.  Fellowship.  A life shared with the Life-Giver and Life-Sustainer.

What I want to jump up and down for is the fact that even faith is a gift.  {It is by grace you have been saved...through faith...and this is not from yourselves...it is a gift...Eph. 2:8}

"Faith is a settled confidence that something in the future--something that is not yet seen but has been promised by God--will actually come to pass because God will bring it about."  ESV study bible notes

Sure, we believe that God exists. But, do we believe that He is a rewarder of all who seek Him?  Rewarder in Greek is "misthapodotes" and means to let out wages or to give away as in paying out. 

Do we see God in this light?  Not as a genie in a bottle, but as a God who desires our seeking-out and desires for us to be blessed and to know Him as our all-in-all...our very portion?

Enoch pleased God because he lived a life of faith.  He walked with God and communed with God.  He trusted in God's plan, even when it meant skipping death.  He had a very sweet relationship with His creator.

"Faith is an absolutely necessary element in the reception of any gift; for let our friends give a thing to us ever so fully, it is not really ours until we believe it has been given and claim it as our own."  Hannah Whitall Smith

She says, "until we believe we are loved, it never really becomes ours."

Do we really believe we are His precious, priceless, irreplaceable children?

Lord, give us the settled confidence of what your blood has already proven.