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How To
Walk To Please God
Sometimes people think that the Lord is a hard master.
They are ready to say, like the servant, in the parable of
the Pounds, "I feared thee, because thou art an
austere man" (Luke 19:21). The motive of the service
of such persons is fear, not love. They serve God because
they are afraid punishment will come upon them if they do
not. They look at the results of not doing instead of
looking at the results of doing. Their religion is a
negative thing, and can have little of joy in it. Their
service is a forced service, and not really and truly a
willing service. If they do not serve God, hell will be
their doom; therefore they try to do that which is right
or which they esteem to be right.
God is not a hard master. His requirements are all
reasonable. Thus says Micah: "What doth the Lord
require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy, and
to walk humbly with thy God?" (Micah 6:8). Is there
any hardship in that? anything we cannot gladly do? No,
God is not a hard master; he is a God of lovingkindness
and of tender mercy. Paul calls our service to him a
"reasonable service." God is always just; he is
always kind; he always makes all the allowance that he
ought to make for us. If we are weak, he will strengthen
us; if we are ignorant, he will give us of his wisdom; if
we grow faint, he will uphold us; if he is kind to the
unthankful and the evil, how much more so will he be to
those who love him and try earnestly to serve him. He is
not hard to please, and if we really try to please him, we
shall not only succeed, but have the testimony of his
Spirit in our hearts that he is well pleased with us.
He can be pleased only with that which is right. He
hates iniquity; he hates every evil thing and can find no
pleasure whatever in such. If, then, we would please him,
we must depart from evil; must shut it out of our lives;
must allow none of our conduct to be evil. God is pleased
with that which is good and all that is good. In order to
please him, therefore, we have only to do that which is
good and right. Some people think that the Christian life
is an unnatural and hard life; they seem to think that we
must put ourselves in a sort of strait-jacket and live a
life of bondage. They look at the negative aspect of the
life and think that the life of the Christian consists in
not doing and not being and not feeling and not thinking
this, that and the other. They feel that they must shut
themselves off from that which they naturally desire. This
is looking at things from the wrong angle. The Christian
life is a positive life; it consists in doing and being.
It is not an unnatural or forced life; it is not a
strained life. It is not a life in which we have to
repress all our normal desires; on the contrary, it is a
life wherein our desires are brought into conformity to
the will of God so that we can carry out these desires in
a natural and normal and holy way, and find in carrying
them out our truest pleasure and God's greatest glory.
The Christian life is not a repression of desire. It is
the revolution of desire, so that our desires become holy
desires and our purposes become holy purposes. If we try
to live Christians without this revolution, we shall have
a hard and irksome task. That is why so many professors
say they have such a "hard row to hoe." The
reason why they find little or no joy in Christian service
is because their lives have not been transformed by the
power of God. Their life is lived wholly in their own
power. It is thus an unnatural and powerless life, one
beset with many difficulties, and one which cannot be a
real Christian life, but at best can only be a cold
formality.
The Christian life is a life full of warmth and
strength and beauty. The law of that life is love. We are
to walk in love. To do this we must lay aside all selfish
purposes. This is not hard if we really love. That is the
question - Do we really love? Christ is our example in
pleasing God. He said, "I do always those things that
please him" (John 8:29). Why did he do this? and how
was he able to do this? It was because he loved the Father
with a pure and tender love; it was because he loved the
things that the Father loved. The basis of all acceptable
service is love. God could force us to serve him had he
chosen that way, but that service would never have
satisfied the heart of God or the heart of man. Love, not
force, is God's method. He has not put us under compulsory
law; he has left for us to choose whether we will serve
him or not. There is no harshness in his rule. He will not
compel us. Jesus thus stated the foundation of God's law:
"He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he
it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved
of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest
myself to him. If a man love me, he will keep my words:
and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him,
and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth
not my sayings" (John 14:21, 23, 24). If we love, we
will serve, not because we must, but because we love. The
only compulsion is the compulsion of love, and that, after
all, is the strongest of all compulsion. If we love God,
we desire with all our hearts and with all our strength to
please him. We shall seek throughout our lives to conform
to his will in all the details and in all the aspects of
our lives. It is not hard for love to serve; in fact, love
finds its greatest delight in service. It is true that
there is self-denial in service, but to love, self-denial
is not bitter, but sweet. How gladly we lay ourselves out
for those whom we love! and how sweet is the approval thus
gained! The early Christians "took joyfully the
spoiling of their goods." They bore persecution of
the bitterest kind and rejoiced. Why could they do this?
Because they loved.
The power of love is illustrated by the following
incident "A minister who was ill was lying on a couch
one day while his little girl played around the room in
her childish way. Presently he said to her,
"Daughter, will you bring Papa a drink?" She
went on with her playing as though she had not heard him.
He repeated his request. She was all absorbed in her play,
and said, "Oh, I don't want to." Her father
said, "I thought you loved Papa." Instantly she
dropped her playthings, her face lighted up, and she
started, saying, "Oh, yes, Papa, I'll go, I'll
go"; and quickly she ran and brought the desired
drink. When her love was appealed to, her response was
immediate. So God appeals to our love, and if that love is
genuine, our response to him will be ready.
The contemplation of God's love and goodness is the
strongest possible incentive to live holy. We love him
because he first loved us and gave himself for us. When we
behold how good and how kind he has been through all our
lives, how he has borne with our evil ways and not cut us
off, how he still offered us mercy day after day until
finally he won our love - when we view all this, how
strongly are we impelled to serve him and how easy his
service becomes! We do not wish to wound those whom we
truly love.
We may find many things in the Christian life that are
hard to do with our own strength, but we do not have to
trust to our strength alone. Paul, who had learned the
secret of Christian life, says, "Nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Galatians 2:20).
Ah, that is the great secret of the life! That is what
makes it easy, that is what makes it joyful, that is what
makes it glorious - Christ liveth in us. Again, it is
said, "It is God which worketh in you"
(Philippians 2:13). The secret of a victorious life is
permitting him to work in us - submitting to him that his
will may be wrought in us, and not only submitting, but
throwing our will actively with his, causing his will to
be accomplished. Too many people try to live the Christian
life without first becoming Christians. They take upon
themselves a profession of religion, but they do not get
Christ in their hearts. Their service is all a human
service, and consequently it fails and comes short and is
inadequate. Throw open your heart's door. Let Christ come
in to reign. Let him be the power that worketh in you, and
then you can live the kind of life that will please him.
To try in your own strength is but to fail. To succeed you
must needs have his power joined with your power.
For a year and a half the writer tried to be a
Christian before he really became a Christian. It was his
heart's true purpose to serve God and do right, but alas,
how often he came short! alas, how often he was involved
in sin! Sometimes he felt that it was not worth trying
anymore, that only failure awaited him. At last he threw
himself upon the mercy of God and received Jesus Christ
into his life. What an unspeakably glorious change was
wrought! He could now live - Christ could live in him; and
for more than twenty-five years he has proved the
Christian life to be an easy, a natural, and a happy life
filled with the glory and grace of God. Christ broke the
gravitation earthward and established a gravitation
heavenward. From that time forward, service was
delightful, and it has been his joy to follow Christ, and
he knows what it is from personal experience to have the
testimony of the Spirit of God in his heart that God is
well pleased with him. He is not an isolated example.
There are tens of thousands who know this in their own
lives and hearts. They live this kind of life and have
this kind of testimony. In fact, such is the outcome of a
true Christian experience. If service is hard, it is from
a lack of love. If service is imperfect, it is from a lack
of love. Therefore let us love that we may serve, and
serve because we love.
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