If We Are Already Loved by God, Can We Please Or Displease Him?
There is a greater capacity of depth to our relationship with God than we may know.
We often think God’s mind is already made up about us and in some ways, it is. We are deeply loved in Christ and this cannot change. (Romans 5:8) But even though we have this foundation, it does not mean it is impossible to either please or displease our God with the way in which we act. If God is a relational God, and He is, then it makes sense that we can please Him.
Do we not seek to please the ones we love?
In any relationship you have, if you love them, you want to please them. To make them happy. To have their approval and blessing on the way in which you live. This is no different with God. This may sound basic, but I often default to thinking God is static in His relationship with me. But does this not shallow out our relational dynamic?
We relate to God as His children and He relates to us as His father. What child, although there is always a foundation of love from his father, does not go through times of pleasing and displeasing him because of how you live and act?
We long to please, not to earn love, but as an expression of love.
This is perfectly illustrated in the story of Solomon and his request for wisdom.
King Solomon
In 1st Kings chapter 3, Solomon is asked by God what he wants. Solomon, with the ability to ask for riches, more power, and the death of his enemies, asks for “a receptive heart to judge your people and to discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of yours?” (1 Ki 3:9.)
Solomon asks for wisdom to rightly judge and help his people. And what is God’s response?
“Now it pleased the Lord that Solomon had requested this.” (1 Ki 3:10.)
It pleased God.
God was pleased, you could even say proud, of what Solomon had done.
After I read this I began to pray and meditate on the reality that we can please God. I started to think about my upcoming day. What actions could I do today that would please God? Not to earn His love, for that is already secured in Christ, not my works.
I thought about trying to serve my wife better, praying more for the people in my ministry, being more generous with my money, and not complaining when I have to serve more this weekend than I’d like to.
I’d like to think God would be pleased with these actions. But my mind can easily go to many times when I have felt God’s displeasure.
The Inverse
I also thought about how I could displease God. My mind went to seasons of my life where I felt most sinful. And although I was loved and forgiven by God for my sins, in those seasons I felt a tremendous displeasure over the way I was living.
I do not want to walk in sinful ways that displease Him and that harm our intimacy. Acting in ways that are not loving to others who are deeply loved by God will always displease Him because they are His children too.
The Balance
With all this talk about pleasing and displeasing, we must be careful. I’ve said it many times, but I will repeat it. In our relationship with God, there is a deep and steadying foundation of love. Consider 1st John 4:10- “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
I can see a younger version of myself, always checking my spiritual temperature trying to see if I am pleasing or displeasing God. There is a heart behind attempting to discern your place with God that is healthy. But there is such thing as being too occupied with attempting to discern God’s “level of pleasure” with your actions. I caution you, as someone who has struggled with this. If you start to feel anxiousness or despair, that is not from the heart of Christ towards you.
The fact that we can please and displease God is meant for our joy and our help. When we please God, it increases our joy. When we displease Him and feel the helpful loving discipline and displeasure, it leads us to grow and repent. All of this is founded upon the foundation of His love for us, never apart from it.
You can please God with your actions—not to earn His love, but as an expression of it.
Always know you are secured in the love of God and this is not your own doing or by works, but you do have the capacity to please or displease God. Out of love for Him, how might you seek to please Him today?
What sin do you need to confess and repent of?
How could you have more faith in God, waiting on His perfect plan and timing?
What action of service and love for others do you need to accomplish today?
How might you spend time with God today, rather than being too busy for Him?
How could you spend time in thankfulness for God’s deep and unending love for you?
“Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.” - 1 Thessalonians 4:1
Finding my own ways to please Him,
Josh.