Pleasing God

Self-Centered Godliness.  Modern Christians tend to make satisfaction their religion.  We show much more concern for self-fulfillment than for pleasing our God.  Typical of Christianity today, at any rate in the Engilish-speaking world, is its masive rash of how-to books for believers, directing us to more successful relationships, more joy in sex, becoming more of a person, realizing our possibilities, getting more excitement each day, reducing our weight, improving our diet, managing our money, licking our families into happier shape, and what not.  For people whose prime passion is to glorify God, these are doubtless legitimate concerns; but the how-to books regularly explore them in a self-absorbed way that treats our enjoyment of life rather than the glory of God as the center of interest.  Granted, they spread a thin layer of Bible teaching over the mixture of popular psychology and common sense they offer, but their overall approach clearly reflects the narcissim - “selfism” or “me-ism” as it is sometimes called - that is the way of the world in the modern West.

So wrote J. I. Packer in his book, Keep in Step with the Spirit in the chapter, “Mapping the Spirit’s Path: The Way of Holiness.”  “Self-Centered Godliness” sadly defines much of what passes today for Christianity.  It is an indictment on this generation that words like godliness, sanctification, and holiness, which were central to conversations of believers, the subject of sermons, and the hot issue of writing just 75 years ago is now practically absent from the modern Christians vocabulary.  We are now so absorbed with self and the fulfillment of our needs, claiming our miracle, discovering our gifts, exercising our faith, exploring our ministry, etc., that God has become little more than a genie in a bottle (bible) - a means to our end.

Packer continues:

Now self-absorption, however religious in its cast of mind, is the opposite of holines, holiness means godliness, and godliness is rooted in God-centeredness, and those who think of God as existing for their benefit rather than of themselves as existing for his praise do not qualify as holy men and women.  Their mind-set has to be described in very different terms.  It is an ungodly sort of godliness that has self at its center.

Jerry Bridges, The Fruitful Life, has this to say about the proper motivation in pleasing God.

Devotion to God is the only acceptable motive for actions that are pleasing to God. This devotion may express itself in one of several different ways. We may have a sincere desire to please God or to glorify Him; we may do or not do a particular action because we love God or because we sense that He is worthy of our obedience. However our motivation expresses itself, if is is God-centered, it rises out of our devotion to God and is acceptable [pleasing] to Him (p. 13).

Who hasn’t, at some point, sought to please someone for less than honorable reasons? Whenever we seek to please someone with an eye to our own advantage, whether by favor or praise, we are acting out of self-centered motives. Under close scrutiny much of what passes as seeking to please God is nothing more than self-interest, self-preservation, self-promotion, in a word, self-centered.

To this Bridges adds, “Unfortunately, too often our motives are self-centered rather than God-centered. But that motivation is never related to God and thus is not acceptable” (p. 13).

What is needed is a submissiveness to the Holy Spirit that will promote an openness to His examination and correction through the Word, so that a godward motivation is fervently maintained.

Psalm 139:23

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!

Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Prayer:  Father, it is not enough that we seek to please you, our motivation in pleasing you must be examined.  Bring the light of your word in the hands of your Spirit to bear on our motives.  Correct us.  Cleanse us.  Forgive us.  And show us the way to center all of our affections and actions on You.  For your glory!