Pleasing God

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.” Romans 12:1 (The Message)

I saw a billboard outside a local church last week. It said this: “Anything you do that brings pleasure to God is an act of worship”.

At a gathering a few days later we were asked: “What have you done this week that you think would have pleased God?” Here are some of the responses.

“I love delivering training in small groups, helping people learn, and this week I’ve had two opportunities to do that. I believe God is pleased when we do things that we seem to have been made for.”

“We took Sam [2 year old son] to a firework display. He loved it, and there were lots of other families there who seemed to be having a good time. I think God is pleased when families get along.”

“I took a group of my year 9’s into the hills for a 7-mile walk, as a practice for Duke of Edinburgh. The weather was wild and they found it really tough, but they really achieved something. I feel God likes us to overcome barriers and grow a bit.”

“I spit-roasted a lamb – it took 5 hours. Then I invited loads of friends and family around to share it. It was fantastic and I think God would be pleased.”

“I’m the world’s worst evangelist. But the other day a work colleague started asking me about my church. I don’t know what she made of it all, but she ended up coming out with us on Friday night to help with the work we do with the homeless people. She didn’t even seem to mind the singing and praying beforehand.”

“I’ve been offered a Christmas job: to dress up as the Gingerbread Man in Oldham town centre and make children happy. How cool is that!”

You see, worship is about far more than singing a few hymns once a week.

The right one

So, I'm thinking about guidance. Depending on your background, you may think this whole guidance thing is simply off the wall. Guidance? For what? By whom? Alternatively, if you're familiar with evangelical culture, it may be commonplace, and you KNOW that God guides his children, and you may even subscribe to a particular pattern by which this happens.

But as I said last time, I've been doing some reading around the subject and come across some alternative views from within Christian circles - and I have to confess, what they're saying squares up with my own experience. You see, the 'traditional' view says that God has a plan for your life and that it's up to you to find out what that is and live by it. So, some would say he's identified a particular career and specific jobs within that; there's one life partner that he's lined up for you; he's called you to this place or that.....and so it goes on. And if you try to live in this way, you might well find yourself frustrated, confused, wavering (did God really say that?).

The 'alternative' view (eg Friesen) says yes, God has a plan for your life, but it is framed in what is described as his moral will: it's God's will that you should honour your parents, that you should love your neighbour, that you should uphold justice....it's all there in The Book. Beyond that, he's given you a mind, a conscience, a will and the capacity to make decisions. Now those decisions are not divorced from God's plan, far from it. In choosing between this job or that, there will undoubtedly be several factors to consider, and it may well be that one of them is more likely to align with God's 'moral will'. More likely however, things probably won't be clear and the important thing is not so much which job to take as how to conduct yourself in whichever one you do take. So it is with your life partner: is he/she THE One? That's not the issue. Obviously it helps if you're compatible, sharing similar interests, humour, values. But beyond that, the long term success of that relationship is going to depend on how considerate you are, to what extent you're prepared to set aside your own needs for the sake of your partner. Because it is quite possible to find THE One and to fail because you're basically selfish!

How do you travel?

Do you ever have this experience where, having not consciously thought about or heard about a particular issue for years, suddenly the same thing comes at you all at once from several directions? It happens to me often.

This past week I've been reading around the subject of 'guidance' in preparation for a college assignment. Over the years I've modified my approach to this area of life with God: at one time I would have been with those who said you need to do something like this:

• lock yourself in a room for at least an hour


• ask God whether you should take the van driving job, get involved in the evangelistic tapdancing group or go on holiday with the Browns


• wait for God to 'speak'


• if nothing happens, take no action on the said issue until you do hear

In this way, Christians have become paralysed in their lives on many fronts, ever waiting for God to speak. Meanwhile, the 'less spiritual' among us have just made decisions and gone for it.

My reading is bringing me into contact with several attitudes to the guidance issue, but most of which would NOT uphold the process I outline above, and I shall blog some more about that over the coming days.

However, the other input to this came most unexpectedly. I visited the Faithworks Conference in London yesterday and found myself in a seminar which focused on us as individuals charting our course in the process of changing our communities. The question was posed: how do you make the journey?

• are you a map reader? You like a plan of how it all fits together, how one bit relates to another; this is where you are and in order to get to that other place this is the route you need to follow - just make sure you keep checking the map.


• do you prefer Sat Nav? This looks a lot like the process I outlined earlier: 'Stop', 'Turn right', 'Travel straight ahead for 3 miles'


• are you a compass user? Having a strong sense of North, you have an internal source of guidance to help you navigate your environment.

I confess to being a bit of a map junkey when it comes to the physical world, whether I'm running, driving or visiting London and wondering if I can sensibly walk from Euston to wherever. I'll always pull out a map, measure the odd distance, note with some satisfaction that I can now see how Marple and Glossop are related and that there's what looks like a great running route along that canal.....I can lose myself in the map.

And I'm wondering to what degree that map mentality translates into my approach to finding my way along life's paths. This requires further pondering.