To some extent, we all like pleasing other people. It’s nice. Of course you can take that too far and become a people pleasing door mat, but there’s a good side to pleasing others. So … how do we set about pleasing God? What does that look like? What do we have to do?

I have a wonderful daughter who has just turned 21, her name's Melissa. Now Mel is blessed to have hit her gig in life, her shtick in life, she's discovered that she's a gifted beauty therapist. She loves giving people facials and beauty treatments that make them feel a million bucks.

Now, there are two parts to Melissa's gifting. One is that she has it when it comes to the ability to give a brilliant facial or to paint a woman’s nails perfectly, it's a hand eye co ordination thing. I don't know, anyhow she's got the knack of that.

But the second part is she's hard wired to please people. Her personality type is that she loves to make other people happy and so combine the two, the physical ability to do the job and the heart to do it well, to please her clients and hey, you're on a winner. Not only is she one of the top performers in the salon where she works but she really, really loves doing what she does.

Now we all relate to this idea of pleasing people, some more, some less, it's great to be able to bring joy to someone else’s heart but there's a down side to being a people pleaser and maybe we can talk about that another day but you'll agree with me that there is something good about wanting to please someone else.

So here's the question, how do you please God? That's what we're going to chat about today on the program.

There's a huge part of me that just wants to please God, with everything I think and feel and say and do. I really, really, really want to please God. I mean really I do but some days it seems all I have to do to blow that is to wake up and get out of bed in the morning. Does that make sense?

You want to do what's right, you know what's right, with all your heart you want to please God but you just can't seem to be able to do it sometimes. It's like there's a war going on inside you, you want to do what's right but every time you want to do what's right evil intentions are lurking there, right over your shoulder whispering into your ear.

Well it's not just me, it's not just you. The Apostle Paul who wrote almost half the Books in the New Testament had exactly the same problem. You can read about it Romans chapter 7. So how do we please God?

Let's go back towards the end of the New Testament in the Book of Hebrews chapter 11 which is where we've been spending some time together this week and lets have a look because there's an answer in there as to how you and I can please God and the answer simply isn't working harder. Hebrews chapter 11, lets start at verse 4:

By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain's. Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts. He died but through his faith he still speaks.

By faith Enoch was taken so that he didn't have to experience death and he wasn't found because God had taken him for it was attested before he was taken away that he had pleased God.

And without faith it's impossible to please God for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Now, isn't this really interesting? Because back there in the Book of Genesis chapter 4 where we read about Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve's two boys, we're not really given a reason why it was that Abel's offering was more acceptable to God and Cain's wasn't. There's a kind of a hint, we're told that there wasn't something quite right there in Cain's heart but that's it.

It certainly had nothing to do physically with what he did, both Cain and Abel brought an offering to God, they were different but they were still offerings. Cain's was rejected while Abel's was acceptable to God and as a result out of envy Cain murders his brother Abel.

So what was the difference between the two? Faith.

By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain's. Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts. He died but through his faith he still speaks.

Abel gave his offering to God in faith and as God showed through His response to Cain an offering without faith isn't pleasing to God at all. It's not just the physical act of making a sacrifice, that sacrifice has to come with faith and again we read that Enoch had been blessed by God because he pleased God how? Because of his faith.

Executive summary, bottom line, what is God really saying to us here? He's saying without faith it's impossible to please Him.

For whoever would approach Him has to believe He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.

And it's not just here in the Book of Hebrews that we discover the importance of faith in pleasing God, Jesus told people the exact same thing. When someone asked Him, "Lord what do I have to do to be saved? What do I have to do?" He answered quite simply, "Just believe in me, believe in the One whom God sent."

How often have you and I worked so hard at pleasing God as though anything we can do can possibly add to what Gods already done and what He's planning to do. Sometimes I think we behave as though, as though God's totally and completely and utterly depending on you and depending on me to fulfil His plans. As though without us God’s plan for this world is going to fall completely in a screaming heap, God’s going to stand there and go oh no, I don't know what to do now that Berni hasn't delivered.

And so we work hard and we work hard and we bring in the offering and the sacrifice and we see all the problems facing us and so we work harder and we bring in another offering from the field like Cain with little or no faith in our hearts because all we can see is the problem. We go, oh man I've just got to keep going through these rituals and delivering and working.

Well guess what? Without faith it's impossible to please God. Would you please note that word impossible? What it doesn't say is that without faith you won't please God quite as much through your labours as you may have done had you put a bit of faith in the mix. That's not what it says; it says that without faith it is impossible to please God.

The Greek word used there for "impossible" means literally "to be completely without strength, to be impotent, powerless, weak, disabled, that it's not able to be done." Why? Because God's God and He's put us here in this physical world that’s removed from His spiritual dimension yet the spiritual dimension, the God dimension, the presence of God is as real and as present as the nose on my face.

Our act of love, our act of pleasing God is to honour Him by believing that He is, that He does exist, that He is in the business of blessing and rewarding those who seek Him. Why does He do things that way? Well, think about it, God has a bit of a problem when it comes to eliciting a free love response from you and me. If we could see God for what He is, if we could see Him face to face in all His power and all His glory there'd be no free will.

In the face of that power every knee would bow, every tongue would confess that Jesus is Lord. So He removes us from His presence, He puts us in a place where we lay hold of Him through a layer of adversity we call life, through a cloud of unknowing, never quite seeing Him clearly in this life and we lay hold of Him, we honour Him, we love Him by faith.

And that's what faith is all about and that why without faith it's impossible to please God. Ask Cain, ask Abel, they'll tell you all about it because by faith that story is still being told today.

So the next time you feel the need to work your backside off so that you'll please God, remember this, your work isn't so much the thing that pleases God, it's not about the sacrifice alone, it's about you, it's about me, it's about our faith.

When we do what we do and do it in faith that's what pleases God. That's an awesome message, it's a message that means you don't have to work harder to please God, we just have to trust in Him and somehow, you know when we trust in Him it changes our heart and that's what makes things happen. By faith.