Pleasing God

This Sunday I will sharing the fourth sermon in our "How Should We Live" series from 1 Thessalonians.  This week's theme is "Live to Please God".  We sing a song that says, "For the praises of man I will never ever stand."  In theory we know that we live to praise God with our life, but something interesting occured to me as I reread this passage in 1 Thessalonians again and again.  How we treat our fellow man affects how pleased God is with our lives.  This is especially true when that fellow man is a fellow follower of Christ.  Sometimes Christians say the meanest things and it usually happens when they don't get their way.  It is so easy to criticize the other person for not doing something that you yourself should be doing as well and not even realize it.

Somebody ought to clean up that mess in the lobby of the church!  Somebody ought to start a ministry for single moms!  Somebody ought to go and visit the senior citizens in our church!  I sure wish I could meet "somebody".  Are they a real person?  Did their mother really name them "somebody"?  If so they sure are going to be busy all of their life, because there sure is a whole lot of stuff for "somebody" to do.

In verse 9 of this chapter Paul talks about "brotherly love".  He uses the word "phileo".  In its original use outside of the New Testament it meant the mutual love that children of the same father had for each other.  Maybe they didn't always agree but they were family and because of that they always had "bortherly love" for each other.  In the New Testament it became the term used for the love between fellow believers in Christ.  I wonder if "somebody" is receiving "phileo" from those who so easily use his name in a negative way.

The realilty is everytime we use the word "somebody" we have a face in mind.  At home we want "somebody" to clean up this room, at work we want "somebody" to finish this project, at church we want "somebody" to care start a new ministry or care for the hurting.   I would love to suggest that, you go ahead and get that picture of "somebody" find a really nice frame for it and have it around the house so that you will always know who that "somebody" is.  But if you really want to please God with your lives, right before you hang that picture on the wall ... you replace it with a mirror.