Pleasing God vs. Trusting God
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Grace and Parenting, and I quoted from a book titled, “The Cure and Parents.” Many of you seemed interested in that post because it was my most read blog over the past month.
Well, many of the things in that book were based on a book by the same authors simply titled, “The Cure.: What if God isn’t who you think He is and neither are you?”
Therefore, today, I thought I would highlight a few things that made such an impact on me in hopes that it would help you too.
PLEASING GOD VS. TRUSTING GOD
The book starts off with a story of a guy who is standing at a fork in the road. He is forced to choose which road he wants to go down. Each road has a sign on it.
One sign says, “pleasing God,” and the other sign says, “trusting God.”
His thoughts are that trusting God doesn’t seem like that gives him much to do, so he chooses the pleasing God path. Eventually, he gets to a room that is called, “The Room of Good Intentions.”
It’s a room that is filled with impressive looking people who are striving to accomplish things. At first, he is excited to join them and begin running down the path of doing. Eventually though, he fails. He can’t talk about it though because the people in this room won’t let him. They just keep putting on masks and pretending that everything is just fine.
Once he hit the end of his rope, he goes back to the fork in the road and reluctantly begins to go down the path titled, “trusting God.” Eventually, he finds another room, but this room is titled, “The Room of Grace.”
He discovers that the people in this room are genuine and authentic. They understand not just who God is but also who they are in Christ. When they sin, they talk about it, and they trust that God still likes them and is walking with them to work on those things as they grow in grace.
He finds a new freedom and discovers intimacy with God as he learns to trust who God is and who God says that he is in Christ.
THE CURE: HIGHLIGHTER WORTHY QUOTES
As the story is being told, the authors break away in each chapter to dive into the truths this man is learning and how they apply to all of our lives as well. As I read through each chapter, I found myself highlighting so many things that have made an impact on my walk with Christ. Here are a few:
CHAPTER ONE: TWO ROADS
“Despite all my passionate sincerity, I keep sinning. Then I get fixated on trying not to sin. The it repeats: same sin, same thoughts, same failure.”
“If our primary motive is pleasing God, we’ll never please Him enough and we’ll never learn trust. Pleasing God is a good desire. It just can’t be our primary motivation or it will imprison our hearts… When our primary motive becomes trusting God, however, we suddenly discover there is nothing in the world that pleases Him more! Until you trust God, nothing you do will please God.”
CHAPTER TWO: TWO FACES
“This life in Christ is not about what I can do to make myself worthy of His acceptance, but about daily trusting what He has done to make me worthy of His acceptance.”
“No one ever told me that when I wear a mask, only my mask receives love.”
CHAPTER THREE: TWO GODS
“You have as much of God as you’re going to get! He lives in you! You are in Him. How much closer do you want than that? Every moment of every day, fused with you, there He is. He never moves. Never covers His ears when you sin, never puts up a newspaper, never turns His back. He’s not on the other side of your sin, waiting for you to get it together so you can finally be close. It’s incredible! Don’t you think? That’s why they call it ‘Good News’!”
CHAPTER FOUR: TWO SOLUTIONS
“I am ‘Christ in me’ on my worst day, in my worst thought, during my worst temptation. So, I learn to tell on myself, both to God and to others. I experience the truth that living in holiness is living with nothing hidden. Then I am clean; I am free; I am healing.”
CHAPTER FIVE: TWO HEALINGS
“We must be weakened to the point we drop our defenses long enough to look to God and call out, ‘Help.’ This condition is called repentance… Repentance isn’t doing something about my sin. It’s admitting I can’t do anything about my sin. It’s trusting that only God can cleanse me, and only He can convince me I’m truly cleansed.”
CHAPTER SIX: TWO FRIENDS
“God allows some pain to awaken our hearts. Many of us are awakening to the pain of realizing we can’t even control our world the way we thought we could. We’re stuck with unresolved issues, symptoms we’re trying to fix, without the help of anyone else.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: TWO DESTINIES
“The quality of your life is based on trusting this: Where you are right now is the perfect place for you, or the God of all goodness and power would not allow you to be there.”
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