Parents?<\/p>\n
Siblings?<\/p>\n
Elders?<\/p>\n
Peers?<\/p>\n
Posterity?<\/p>\n
Employers?<\/p>\n
Spouse?<\/p>\n
Church Leaders?<\/p>\n
Readers?<\/p>\n
God?<\/p>\n
Yourself?<\/p>\n
In my lifetime I’ve tried to impress all of the above.\u00a0 I suppose each has its time and place for us to please.\u00a0 Then, we find that pleasing others is not as fulfilling as expected.\u00a0 Even pleasing ourselves does not satisfy.<\/p>\n
Surely trying to impress God is right.\u00a0 Well, the truth is that we can’t impress Him—at least not favorably.\u00a0 People through all history have tried, doing every imaginable thing to please the gods of their imagination.\u00a0 It doesn’t do a bit of good.<\/p>\n
The brightest spot in all human history is that the true God did something about this for us.\u00a0 He did the pleasing—He did the impressing—so we don’t have to.\u00a0 Now we can be free to please Him because we want to, not because we have to.<\/p>\n
We weren’t fit to please God, so Jesus pleased Him for us while He was here on earth.\u00a0 When the job of pleasing God for us was done, He said, “It is finished.”\u00a0 He defeated death for us, came back to life, and went back to heaven.<\/p>\n
He gives us power—He gives us His Spirit—He gives us the choice to accept His finished work—He gives us abundant life—and He is pleased with us.\u00a0 And that is how we impress God.\u00a0 And that is how we are free to serve others, not impress them.<\/p>\n
This weekend, starting today, and the next three days, will you remember what Jesus did for you, and accept it, and invite Jesus into your heart and in charge of your life?<\/p>\n
Wouldn’t it be great to please God for the first time?<\/p>\n
Now that would be impressive!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Parents? Siblings? Elders? Peers? Posterity? Employers? Spouse? Church Leaders? Readers? God? Yourself? In my lifetime I’ve tried to impress all of the above.\u00a0 I suppose each has its time and place for us to please.\u00a0 Then, we find that pleasing others is not as fulfilling as expected.\u00a0 Even pleasing ourselves does not satisfy. Surely trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","category-faith_based","category-inspire_lifter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1896,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions\/1896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}