We Aim To Please Him Always

We Aim To Please Him Always

Our aim is to please him always, whether we are here in this body or away from this body. –2 Corinthians 5:9

I hadn’t seen my childhood friend for years and was happy to catch up with her while on a trip to her city. But her pained expression told me that something significant was going on. Her husband had discovered her emotional affair with another man. She was afraid for her family, ashamed, and grieving over the necessary break with the other man, now her closest friend. About her husband, she told me, “I don’t think I’ve ever really loved him.”

I hardly knew what to say, and I didn’t want to offer the expected lines. I knew she knew the Scriptures, but I also knew she was miserable in her marriage and that the prospect of spending the rest of her life that way was unbearable. I tried to be a good listener and share her sorrow about the state of her heart and her marriage. But before we left, I shared this verse that God had been using in my own life: “So we make it our goal to please him” (2 Corinthians 5:9, NIV).

While we can’t control what happens to us, this verse shows us what we can do as we wait for him to take us away from this world of pain. We can throw everything we are into this singular aim: to please God. Pleasing God is more important than if we survive or if we die. When hard things come (and they will) and we wonder what we will do, we make it our goal to please him in how we respond. When we feel the sting of undeserved criticism, the fearfulness of being alone, the weight of overwhelming responsibility, we make it our aim to please him. And it will be worth it. Jesus will be worth everything your sacrificial obedience has cost you and will cost you.

There is a deep and sustaining joy in simply seeking to please God. “I don’t know what you should do,” I told my friend. “But I do know that regardless of the choices you have made to this point, from now on, you can make choices that are guided by a desire to please God. And I am completely confident that a year from now, many years from now, no matter what happens, if you make choices out of a desire to please God more than to please yourself, you will have peace and joy rather than regret and shame.”

Ever-watching One, I want to experience the joy of bringing a smile to your face as you look on my life. Free me from lesser pursuits so that pleasing you becomes my sole aim.

DIGGING DEEPER