What Pleases God? – EP79 (Mark 1:11)




The One Thing - United Faith Church Podcast show

Summary: Mark 1:11 <br> And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Hello and welcome to the One Thing podcast. A question for today, some thought for our hearts and our minds is: What pleases God? What can we do to make God happy? What can we do to truly please God and bring a smile to Him, to have something to truly delight in? What is it that we can do? What type of people should we be?<br> <br> I asked this question to a few different people, and there were a couple different answers that I began to get. One person said, “I truly believe that my effort of working really hard is pleasing to God when I just give it my all and I really do a great job”. Another person actually responded and said, “I think I have a really hard time pleasing God. You know, part of me really wants to do a good job at it. Another part of me just seems to fail miserably over and over and it's so difficult to please Him”. And lastly, another person said, “It’s a person who prays a lot and I find that I am praying a lot more and I feel like because I'm praying more and because I'm thinking a little bit more about God, that it's so pleasing to Him”.<br> <br> Now, I want to go to the Word of the Lord. And in the Word of the Lord, I'm so excited because it states clearly what is pleasing to the Father, what is truly pleasing, what type of person, what can we actually do to please the Father? And it'll truly answer every single one of the people that I've spoken to, even you today as you may be thinking, “What is pleasing to the Father? How can I please Him?”<br> <br> “The only thing that is pleasing to God...” If you look at Mark chapter 1 verse 11, this is where Jesus was baptized and the Spirit of God had come upon Him and all of a sudden, a voice from Heaven, the voice of the Father spoke to His Son and this is what God says about Jesus. It says, “And a voice came from heaven saying: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’”<br> <br> Think about that for a moment. The Son and the Father. The Father and the Son. God is looking down and He is saying, “You Jesus, are my Son whom I love.” See, the love between the Father and the Son is a perfect love. When Jesus looks to His Father, His Father looks directly back at Him and everything that He does is pleasing to Him. How do we know? He says, “...with you I am well pleased.” He is well pleased with Jesus. He is perfectly delighting and pleased in the Lord Jesus Christ.<br> <br> Jesus and the Father are one and they are one in love. They are one in mind, they are one in will and in purpose and this love is a powerful love. It is a pleasing love to the Father. And see, everything that Jesus did, everything that Jesus does, even this day, is pleasing to His Father. There's no mistakes about it. There's no left or right to it. There's no other ups and downs. It is truly Jesus and so what does that mean for us today? My friends, it is that the only thing that is pleasing to God is that we would be full of the Lord Jesus Christ.<br> <br> “...even when we fail at times, there is hope.” The Bible says it in so many different places. “Clothe yourself in Christ.” “Be filled with Christ.” Why is it such a direct thing that God is calling us to? Because listen, our efforts may be ok, our desires may be somewhat for God, our prayers may be going day and night and maybe we may fall at times as well but all those things don't matter in comparison to the power of the Lord Jesus in our lives. You see, the gospel of Jesus is this: that when we turn to Christ, when we truly put our faith and trust in Him, He enters into our lives. He enters into the depths and the soul of man and woman and He is now living through us.<br> <br> And why is this so incredible? Because when Jesus is in us, when we are filled with Christ, we cannot fail because He is pleasing to the Father. When Jesus speaks through us,