{"id":67,"date":"2006-08-15T14:55:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-15T14:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianmashburn.net\/?p=67"},"modified":"2006-08-15T14:55:00","modified_gmt":"2006-08-15T14:55:00","slug":"how-to-serve-god-without-pleasing-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/?p=67","title":{"rendered":"How To Serve God Without Pleasing Him"},"content":{"rendered":"
“Our lives improve only when we take bold, outrageous chances — and the first and clearly most difficult risk we can take is to be brutally honest with ourselves.” — Walter Truett Anderson<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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“Without faith it is impossible<\/em> to please God.” – Hebrews 11:6<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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“What if there were two doors to choose from; behind one door was the complete will of God for your life and behind the other door was how life could be according to your own p<\/span>reference. Which door would you choose?” — unknown, but forwarded to me by my friend Roman McCoy<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n

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It’s a tougher question than it may first appear.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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To choose door #1, the Complete Will of God, would mean to shut the door on my own choosing, which feels like prison to my flesh and ego. But the Promise of this door is to not ever again have to be the one responsible what I “should” do, yet the right and best thing is always done by me, which feels like freedom to my heart.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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To choose door #2, My Complete Will, would mean to open the door of designing my life according to what I think is right and best, which feels like freedom to the flesh and ego. But the Curse of this door is that I have to give up the guarantees and blessings that will only come from God, which (if true) feels like prison to the heart.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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Door #1 takes unlikely faith. It’s like signing up for slavery, totally surrendering to a Slave Master, hoping that life under His rule is better and more meaningful than what I can design myself. No wonder so few take this narrow road! From the flesh’s and ego’s perspective, it is absolute insanity! <\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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But without faith, it is impossible to please God.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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On a skeptical note: I see so many God-followers trying to please God without exerting anything coming close to resembling faith. Many more who aren’t really trying to please God, but hope against hope that their puny expressions of religion, which take no faith at all, will qualify them for a rich life after death so that they continue seamlessly the rich life they have designed for themselves before death.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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On a hopeful note: But I also see so many life-cravers laying down their lives with faith…actual and improbable faith. You’ll notice them. They are the ones with fire in their eyes, spring in their step, suffering in their flesh, and joy in their heart. They are untouchable by any human skeptic, and reaching out touching every human being. They are like God in this way. They are like Christ.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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I don’t want to be over-dramatic, but please pray for us at the Southwest Church of Christ in Amarillo, TX. Something wonderful and life-giving is happening here, by the grace of God, but our ego’s and our flesh is battling against it with all their strength, screaming (with the urgency of a mom who’s 2-year-old just started running towards a street with a car coming) that we are idiots for making a bold and intention-filled move towards Door #1.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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I don’t want me and my family of Christ-followers up here to be busting our butts serving God without it being the kind of service that pleases Him. What a waste of time that would be! Pleasing Him is the key to my life. So the key to my life is doing only the things that require faith. And key to giving life to others is to invite them to make decisions that also require faith.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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The ancients were commended for “being sure of what they hoped for and certain of what they did not see” (Hebrews 11:1-2). In other words, they were commended for what we would call insanity. It’s fine line, this one between faith and insanity, and our fear of the latter keeps way too many of us from ever experiencing the former.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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God help us. Yours is the only commendation I want.<\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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“Our lives improve only when we take bold, outrageous chances — and the first and clearly most difficult risk we can take is to be brutally honest with ourselves.” — Walter Truett Anderson   “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” – Hebrews 11:6   “What if there were two doors to choose from; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pO6nf-15","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}