Text: Colossians 1:9-14

Topic: How to please God

Introduction:

• What does it take to please God?

• Colossians 1:10

• You cannot "do-good" your way into a right relationship with God.

• Ephesians 2:8-10

• You must give your life to Jesus before you can begin to work for him.

• Illustration: May uses the illustration of his son's chores to point out that his boy doesn't work to become his son, the boy works because he's May's son.

• What has God given you the ability, the desire, and the opportunity to do?

• Illustration: May tells the story of businessman and author Mark McCormack, who turned ability, desire, and opportunity into a successful and famous career.

• Colossians 1:10

• Illustration: May tells the story of his son's desire to be with him in a meeting to illustrate how God is pleased that we just want to be near him and know him.

• We cannot make God into something that pleases us; we must strive to know him as he is.

• Illustration: May quotes the lyrics to a praise chorus that demonstrates a desire to know God.

• The more time we spend in God's presence, in his Word, the more we will know what God is really like.

Endure with patience.

• When you read Scripture you can't help but notice that God places a great deal of value on endurance.

• Colossians 1:10

• If you yield yourself to God, he will fill you with his strength and power, and give you the ability to endure.

• Illustration: May compares our relationship with God to a boy who realized he hadn't done everything he could to fix his problem until he had asked his father for help.

Have a thankful heart.

• Colossians 1:12

• Illustration: May tells the story of a young man who was helped out of financial distress but resented his helper to illustrate that while we may not like it, true gratitude obligates us to the giver.

• Colossians 1:12

• God does not want our gratitude to be expressed from a sense of dread; he wants it to be expressed from a sense of joy.

• Psalm 100:4

Conclusion:

• Mark 12:30

• Big Idea: This is what pleasing God is about—that we love him, even to the extent that it makes a difference in the way we act, in the way we think, and in the way we live.