Pleasing God: Pt. 1 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning.

There’s nothing more important in your life than your relationship with the God of the universe. He’s not just the God of the universe. He’s the God of each and every person, and he wants to know you and he wants you to know him personally. He wants to be involved in your day today. And if God is the most important person in your life, then it’s so important that we take time with Him, and that’s what we do each weekday morning at this time.

We spend some time with God, opening the Bible, God’s word to us, and getting God’s perspective on life. This week, we want to look all week at the idea of pleasing God.

What do you think it means to be pleased with something? If you had a pleasing afternoon, a pleasing experience, what does it mean? Well, it means you enjoyed it, right? You liked what you did this afternoon. You took pleasure in that. Well, to be pleasing to God means that God enjoys his time with you, that God enjoys your life, the way you’re living.

In Genesis chapter 5, it talks about Enoch, one of the great men of God in the past. He walked with God for 300 years, the Bible tells us.

In Hebrews, when it refers to Enoch walking with God, it says, before he was taken up to be with God, he was commended as having pleased God. All the other people named in the same passage in Genesis, it says they lived for so long, but for Enoch, it says he walked with God for 300 years. He was commended as having pleased God.

Hebrews says, and without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek Him. Well, the only way to walk with God is to live a life that is pleasing to him. To live a life that is pleasing to God. That’s how you get close to God, to walk with God, to experience the presence of God throughout your day, to hear from God as you open the Bible and read it. It’s not just words on the page, but God is really speaking into your life, to pray and know that God is listening to you and you’re seeing answers to your prayers.

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To find God actually working through you in the lives of the people around you, not just working through a pastor or someone like that, but working through you. This is walking with God, and the only way to do that is to live a life that is pleasing to God.

Well, you know, if you’re going to live in a way that is pleasing to God, saying yes to God, as we all know in life, saying yes to anything means saying no to something else, often many other things, right?

When you said yes at the altar to your spouse, you were saying no to everyone else. When you say yes to one job offer, you’re saying no to the other job offers.

And when it comes to the way you live your life, saying yes to God means saying no to a lot of other things, but also saying yes to those other things means saying no to God, right? That’s how life works.

And so when you think about your life and the way you live your life in the everyday, are you saying yes to God?

What will you say yes to today when you’re at work today, will you be saying yes to God? Will you be living your life doing your work in a way that is pleasing to God or not?

When you decide what you’re going to watch on TV this evening. Are you going to be saying yes to God or yes to something you know God is not pleased with? It’s really practical, isn’t it? But it’s hard to think this way.

What you have to remember is that when you make your choices, you’re either making choices that are pleasing to God or you’re choosing not to walk with Him.

I’m John North.

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