Sword of the Spirit Ministries Online

The God Pleasing Life

By Innocent Mwangi

Choices and consequences

Every choice we make has a consequence. Before making any choice, we have first to consider the consequences attached to it. For instance, if you make a choice to buy a new car, a new house, etc, you must first consider the costs involved and decide whether you are capable of raising the funds required! This could involve taking an extra job, working overtime, etc.

Your desire to have a new car, or a new house should be stronger than the desire to stay in your current comfort zone. Unless you are dissatisfied with your current status, you will never be motivated enough to change.

Therefore, your desire to please God must be stronger than the desire to please man. Since the strongest desire is the one you feed most, you must concentrate on feeding the desire to please God; and you will be surprised how many people you will end up pleasing.

To succeed in the choices that you make, you must have faith in God and in your God given abilities to succeed; set clear, realistic and timely goals, device and implement a strategy for achieving those goals; be consistent and thorough in performing the tasks associated with those goals, have the tenacity to hold on even when the storms of life come crashing in on you; and be resilient enough to start again when your ship fails to come in.

Have faith in God

The bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God. I will go a step further and say that if you don’t have faith in your God given abilities to succeed, you will (i) not please God, and (ii) not succeed.

The journey to success is a journey of faith – of believing without a doubt that despite potential handicaps along the way, success is nonetheless attainable.

Your faith or conviction that you will succeed must however be grounded in reality; that with God everything is possible. You and God form an unbeatable team – you must believe that with all your heart, your body and soul.

To launch into the unknown with doubts still nagging at you is a sure recipe for disaster and failure. One of the things that Jesus felt strongest revulsion for is unbelief. In John 8:44, Jesus rebukes the Jews for their unbelief and tells them that they are incapable of believing the truth because the devil was their father. These are strong words indeed coming from a person of Jesus’ caliber; but it nonetheless brings out the intensity with which Jesus hated unbelief.

The power to succeed does not lie with sophisticated tools, impressive mission statements, or an elaborate business plan. Nay! The power to succeed lies within you – in that area of your psyche where belief or disbelief is embedded. Henry Ford once said: “If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right”. If you believe you will succeed, you will succeed. If you believe you will fail, of course you will fail.

There is a power within you – a power from the Almighty God. This is the power of faith, of believing that if you put your trust in God you will succeed. To believe or to have faith in God is not an emotion. You don’t have to feel goose bumps or weird for to know that you will succeed. Nor do you need to work yourself up into frenzy in a bid to psyche yourself up for success.

Believing is a sober, conscious, premeditated action –an action that is continuous, consistent and tenacious. Believing never gives up, it presses on, even when common sense says ‘give up’. Why? Because, when you believe in God and put your total trust unreservedly upon him, you will never fail.

[Previous installment in this series: God Pleasing Life part 1]