"Why Faith?"
Part 3 - "To Please God"
Why faith? The pleasure of God constitutes a primary reason for trusting Him through the Lord Jesus Christ.
"By faith Enoch was translated, that he should not see death, and was not found because God had translated him. For before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God" (Hebrews 11:5).
That created beings have the capacity to bless the heart of an infinite God should never cease to amaze us. He made us for the relationship whereby He guides and provides, and whereby we trust and submit to Him in faith. When this bond is established and consistently implemented, we bring pleasure to His heart as "faith... worketh by love" (Galatians 5:6). Our obedient actions please Him no doubt. However, the source of our doings - His presence in us - elicits even more joy in God as the Heart to heart fellowship of love for which He made us flows through us in the current of Christ-enabled trust. What a wonder, and what a wonderful reality that fills and fulfills us even as it wondrously pleases the heart of our Heavenly Father. "What is man, that Thou shouldest magnify him, and shouldest set Thine heart upon Him?" marveled Job (Job 7:11). We do well to make that personal, and to be overwhelmed by the possibility that in this day - this moment - we can bring pleasure to God by trusting Him.
Why faith? Because we please our Lord thereby, and because every born again believer in the Lord Jesus must surely desire to bless the One who has so blessed us. "We love Him because He first loved us" (I John 4:19). Trusting God does much for us, beginning with our salvation and proceeding forevermore as we know the Lord Jesus as the Life of our lives. "The just shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17). However, the knowledge that our faith does something in the heart of God, something of bringing pleasure to Him, graces us with a possibility far more glorious than our own blessing. The Apostle Paul called the Thessalonian believers to increasingly embrace the possibility, and his words beckon us to respond in the walk of faith whereby creatures such as ourselves bring pleasure to the heart of our Creator…
"Furthermore than we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, that ye would increase more and more."
(I Thessalonians 4:1)
Weekly Memory Verse
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers."
(Ephesians 4:29)
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