Is God proud of you? Stop and think over your day, your week, month, and last year. At each moment, can you say that God would be proud of you how you have been living in obedience to righteousness? Now, be honest with yourself. You may have had a good day, but just this week you probably haven't been very faithful. It's okay, none of us are perfect...well except me of course. I'm a pastor who always lives to serve God. Every day I strive to be obedient to God's will.... That's an excerpt from any given sermon on any given Sunday, from any given pastor. I exaggerate a little with that but I guarantee that you've heard a version of that before in church and the pastor kind of a little bit sounded like he was excluding himself from judgment. I saw a post that asked if it was biblical to say that God is proud of you. And I thought, well of course He is! How could God not be proud of His children?! Of course, it doesn't feel like that most days. on my best days, I still feel like God is distant and He wants more for me.But that's just it. When we live out of our efforts trying to please God with what we can do, we always feel like we didn't do the best we could. And God is always a loving Father, but not always a proud one.When we live relying on the work of Christ and His obedience and His righteousness, and we believe that it lives in us, we have rest knowing that God is proud of us. God wants you to enjoy Him and the gift of grace, not slave after self-righteous efforts. Here's the deal, there's only been one man who was able to live out of His own ability to serve God 100 percent. And he did that in order that He would fulfill the scriptures and give himself up as a sacrifice for atonement. That's Jesus of course. And because He actually lived a perfect life it makes TOTAL sense that His heavenly father said that He was well pleased with Jesus. So can we experience that same joy from God in our relationship with Him? Yes! Going back to the pastor on any given Sunday. I know that you are probably listening to this and going back and forth between understanding what I'm saying and still longing to have a real sense of approval from God. That is because today's church is constantly teaching that you have to follow the rules and strive for righteousness. Jesus said it Himself. In the sermon on the mount in Matt 5, he tells the crowd to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to act on what he has taught, not just hear it. The next chapter tells us to seek the kingdom and his righteousness first. But has anyone ever laid out what that means or looks like? or at least given you a way to measure if you are doing it enough to be counted? This is living on our own efforts and ability. Our minds know that we are justified and made righteous in Christ and yet still take the phrase to live like Christ to mean that we are to commit our lives to obedience and hope to get better at being obedient. One day, you may get to a point that your obedience outweighs your disobedience and you will make God proud. Well here's a curveball for you. Isaiah 64:6 says we are unfit and our righteousness is filthy rags. And Hebrews tells us that it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God without faith. is faith the magic ingredient that makes our efforts pleasing? Or is faith what pleases God? Our works are just filthy rags but pour some faith on it to clean them up. No, our faith must be what pleases God. He is pleased when we put our faith in HIM, not ourselves. So if you want to please God, ask yourself where your faith is. Put it in HIM and not your efforts. Then the efforts become expressions of God through us and do not hold any weight on whether God is pleased or not. In other words, Faith with constant works, and faith with one work is both pleasing to God. This is what it means to live relying on the work of Christ because THAT is what accomplished our salvation and redemption. Christ's obedience has made us righteous. Not sort of righteous. Not implied righ
