Iliff and Saltillo UM Churches
August 22, 2004
“What Makes God Smile?”
Psalm 119:135 Msg. Bible
“Smile on me, your servant; teach me the right way to live.”
Numbers 6:25 NLT “May the Lord smile on you.”
INTRODUCTION: Have you ever thought of God as a HARSH God toward you? Maybe someone who is “out to get you”? Sometimes we think He is someone who loves to punish us and frown upon our every move. We often mistake the FEAR of God as being “scared to death of Him.” A Christian once said to me, “if the Bible says FEAR, that’s exactly what it means--to be scared to death!”
On the other hand, have you ever considered what makes God smile? Probably most of us haven’t given any thought to that. From listening to people talk, it seems as if many don’t seems aware of God’s smile in their lives--even Christians so much of the time seem to be living without any indications of God’s smile in their daily lives. You may be at this point in your life where you feel that He has forgotten about you or that He is even frowning on you. But scripture says that God does, indeed, smile. We need to think about WHAT makes God smile upon us today and live in such a way that His smile will be more evident in our daily experiences. Let’s see what we can find in scripture that answers this question for each of us.
David in the Psalms was always trying to find ways to please the Lord and to make sure that the Lord was pleased with him. In Psalm 119:135 (NIV) he prays, “Make your face to shine upon your servant and teach me your decrees.” The Message Bible says it this way, “Smile on me, your servant; teach me the right way to live.” In these few verses he is concerned about the right way to live that is going to please God. He goes on to say, “I cry rivers of tears because nobody’s living by your book.” David was one person who felt the Smile of God on his life because he was said to be a person after God’s own heart.
Here are some things that cause God to smile upon us:
1. Putting God First: God smiles when we love Him with all our heart and put him first in our lives. Many Christians live on the fringe of what God wants them to be and do. “I’ll just go to church enough to keep my membership active or just give enough to satisfy the basic requirements. I will just do the minimum to get by.” David said in Psalm 42:1, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” He is saying, “As a deer thirsts for a stream of water, in the same way I thirst for you.” The water for a deer is a first priority--David felt this priority in his relationship with God. It wasn’t a casual, ho hum kind of thing. People will often come out right and say, “If I don’t have anything better to do, I’ll come to church.” In many of the Psalms you can see the intensity of David’s relationship with God and that he was not a person who was satisfied with the bare minimum spiritually.
Making God Number 1 in our life is not necessarily an easy thing to do because many things come to crowd out our commitment to Him. We have to DECIDE to follow Jesus. We have to DECIDE to not allow the cares of our life to crowd Him out. We may not always FEEL like going to church. We may even be out of the habit of going. We may not feel like making the tough choices when something else is calling for our attention. We may PREFER to do something else.
Figure out what will please God, and then do it on a daily basis. Enoch WALKED with God on a daily basis and this became his lifestyle. Our lifestyle is carved out a day at a time. How you live on Monday--not just on Sunday morning for an hour.
God smiles when we love Him totally.
2. God Smiles When We Trust Him Completely:
ILLUSTRATION: There is a saying that the person who smiles when things go wrong is just going off his shift at work.
Psalm 147:11 (NIV)says, “the Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.”
Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.”
This one is another tough one to put into practice. People will say, “Oh, yes, I trust God completely.” And the saying that people often make glibly--”God’s in Control!” It wouldn’t be so bad if they believed it. God Smiles when we can say, “God is in Control. PERIOD.” That shows that we still feel the same way when trouble comes our way. When the pressure is on us. When things are careening out of control.
Trouble: When Nothing Goes Right
A young man was learning to be a paratrooper. Before his first jump, he was given these instructions:
Jump when you are told. Count to ten and pull the rip cord. In the unlikely event your parachute doesn’t open, pull the emergency rip cord. When you get down, a truck will be there to take you back to the airport.
The young man memorized these instructions and climbed aboard the plane. The plane climbed to ten thousand feet and the paratroopers began to jump. When the young man was told to jump, he jumped. He then counted to ten and pulled the rip cord. Nothing happened. His chute failed to open. So he pulled the emergency rip cord. Still, nothing happened. No parachute.
"Oh great," said the young man. "And I suppose the truck won’t be there when I get down either!"
Edited from More Hot Illustrations for Youth Talks by Wayne Rice. Copyright 1995 by Youth Specialties, Inc.
For the Christian, God smiles on us when we are CONSISTENT in our trust day in and day out--good times or bad times--rain or shine.
Can we develop this kind of trust in God?
3. God Smiles When We Obey Him Wholeheartedly: Have you ever had God to nudge you to do something and you didn’t want to do it? You argued with God or tried to change it around so you only did PART OF what you thought He was telling you. He may impress you to give a certain amount of money to a project or to someone. “You say, will, I can’t do that, but I’ll give half of that amount.” Or you put off doing what you know you should do until next week or next month.
It has been said that “Delayed obedience is really disobedience.” Have you ever thought about it that way? How many times we treat the commands of God like a smorgasboard--we say, “I’ll choose the peanut butter pie” but I sure don’t want any “liver or spinach.” We want to pick and choose the commands we obey. We ask God to bless us, but we are not willing to live like he tells us. We say, “ I’ll attend church, but I won’t tithe.” “I’ll read my Bible but I won’t forgive the person who hurt me.” We say we want to worship God. Have you ever thought that “Any act of obedience is an act of worship.”
I never thought of it that way.
Psalm 119:33 says, “Teach me, O Lord, to follow your decrees; then I will keep them to the end.”
Jesus said in John 14:15 (TEV) “If you love me, you will keep my commands.”
God Smiles when we are quick to do what he asks us to do.
4. God Smiles When We Praise and Thank Him Continuously:
STORY: Ralph was head over heels in trouble, but doing little to help himself. A friend advised, "Ralph, you’ve got two hands, why don’t you do something?" "I am," Ralph replied, "I’m wringing both of them."
Many times our prayers consist of asking for things but we never think to say “Thank You.” We ask Him to bail us out of difficulties and when He does, we don’t give Him the time of day. We have places to go and things to do. “Don’t need any help right now, God, but I know where You are and will catch you later.”
STORY: In Budapest, a man goes to the rabbi and complains, "Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?" The rabbi answers, "Take your goat into the room with you." The man in incredulous, but the rabbi insists. "Do as I say and come back in a week." A week later the man comes back looking more distraught than before. "We cannot stand it," he tells the rabbi. "The goat is filthy." The rabbi then tells him, "Go home and let the goat out. And come back in a week." A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, "Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now that there’s no goat-- only the nine of us." George Mikes, How to be Decadent, Andre’ Deutsch, London
Psalm 69:30 NIV says, “I will praise God’s name in song, and glorify him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox, more than a bull with its horns and hoofs--(more than any sacrifice we could make).
The Message Bible says, “Let me shout God’s name with a praising song. Let me tell his greatness in a prayer of thanks.”--Why?--”for God, this is better than oxen on the altar, far better than blue-ribbon bulls” (Psalm 69:30).
Learn to thank the Lord IN ADVANCE for his answers to your prayers. This shows your faith in action.
We notice in the Old Testament a lot of people showed their praise and thanksgiving by building an altar and offering a sacrifice. Noah was one person who set aside time to offer praise and thanksgiving to God in this way. Today we don’t offer animal sacrifices as they did in the Old Testament days, but scripture tells us to “...let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise--the fruit of our lips that confess his name” (Heb. 13:15 NIV).
God smiles when we are generous with our thanks for what He has done and for what He is going to do.
5. God Smiles When We Use Our Abilities: Psalm 37:23 says, “the steps of the godly are directed by the Lord. He delights in every detail of their lives.”
The New Century Version says, “When a man’s steps follow the Lord, God is PLEASED with his ways.”
Many people today just live for themselves and their immediate families. But living for yourselves alone is not fulfilling God’s purpose for why you are here on earth. You have been given talents and abilities; but if they lie dormant and unused, they are being wasted.
Allow your abilities to emerge and be used for others as well as for yourself. Seek to find open doors and opportunities to serve others. One of the best ways to overcome boredom and depression is to volunteer to do something for someone else. The old saying, “Find a need and fill it” is a way to make God smile.
Sometimes you don’t know what to do. Find a need and fill it is a good way to start using your talents and abilities. It doesn’t have to be done perfectly--just do it and God will help you to perfect it. It is He who smiles on your AVAILABILITY probably more than on your ABILITY.
CONCLUSION: These five things are not necessarily the easiest things to put into practice especially when we have a lot of demands placed on us all the time. They take a level of commitment that we may not have right now. God smiles when we begin to move in that direction:
1. to put Him first in our lives--a day at a time
2. to trust Him completely in good times and bad times
3. to obey Him wholeheartedly--not partially
4. to praise and thank Him in advance
5. to use our abilities willingly
These are all things that make God Smile.
May the Lord SMILE on you (Numbers 6:25 NLT).
Let us pray:
