God is not difficult to please

Proverbs 16:7 When a man’s ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies be at peace with him.
One of the keys to failure in life is trying to be a people-pleaser. Bill Cosby said it well, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” I have met and counselled a number of people who were living miserable lives because they were going out of their way to please their relatives, friends and bosses. Unfortunately, those important people in their lives were ungrateful and hard to please. Their hearts were broken. Relationships went sour and tension and strife built up between them just because efforts to please other people went unappreciated, let alone reciprocated.

It is difficult to please people because their needs, desires, wishes and dreams are subject to change. Also the hearts of people are desperately wicked and full of deceit and their appetites for things are insatiable. Let me illustrate this. One day a person in need asked for two dollars. Desiring to please him, the benefactor offered him five dollars.

The needy person was so pleased that he jumped and praised God. However, when the benefactor pulled out some US$20 note from his wallet and asked the beneficiary to take US$5 and give him back his change, the beneficiary was displeased. He said, “Man, why don’t you just give me all the money. I need US$20. Please, please give me all the money.” The benefactor was hurt. Instead of giving him the US$5 he had offered, he put back the money in his wallet and went away sad.

On the other hand, the beneficiary got angry for not being given anything at all and he shouted at him, cursing him. But who was wrong? The benefactor or the beneficiary? Both were wrong. However, the benefactor was more to blame because he sought to please instead of showing compassionate love. If he were moved by compassion rather than the desire to please he would have ignored the silly demands of the needy person, as it is their common characteristic, and went ahead to give him the US$5 he had promised. Love is patient and love never fails. But trying to please people causes heart breaks. Trying to please people creates enemies while pleasing God causes you to be at peace with your enemies (Proverbs 16:7).

When efforts to please people are repaid with ingratitude, suspicion and criticism, it serves us right. Why so? The reason is simple and it is that God has never intended us to please people. The intention of God is that we love people. In fact, God intends so strongly for us to love people that He has made it a commandment. You may want to search the scriptures for yourself but you will never find any place where God commands you to please anybody. But scriptures abound which command us to love people, even our enemies.

However, the scriptures clearly show us that we can seek to please God and that God is not difficult to please. The reason why God is easy to please is that He does not change. If God promises you that if you do this and that He will do this and that. You can bank on His word. He cannot and will not lie. Numbers 23:19 asserts the faithfulness of God, it reads, “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?”