Your Grade on God's Report Card

2 October 2012.  Late last week we took a 4 hour car ride with Freddy and Bethany.  Bethany is an American intern working for World Renew and Freddy, a Nicaraguan, is a former street-fighter and professional boxer who now works in Managua for another Christian non-governmental organization with world-wide ministry.  Together we went to a very remote village to attend a dedication ceremony for the village’s brand new domestic water supply project.  Funding, encouragement and advice were provided by both Nicaraguan and North American sources, but the manual labor to bury the 5 kilometer pipeline through mountainous terrain was provided entirely by the local campesinos—rural folks.  They were justifiably proud of their project, and now they will enjoy plentiful healthy water and all the benefits that will flow from it.  The visit was a great reminder of how much I take for granted—my purified water has never taken much more effort than turning a tap.

But I want to write about another interesting thing that occurred on the long drive home.  Freddy, who speaks pretty good English already, asked me a couple of questions about the language, or so I thought at first.  What is the difference between “satisfied” and “pleased?” he asked.  After thinking a second I explained that a person can be satisfied when the minimum standards are met, but one is pleased when the result is better than the minimum standards.  It’s like a report card in school, where a C means your work is satisfactory, but when the teacher is pleased by your work, you get an A.  Or maybe, Peggy chimed in, when the teacher is pleased you get a B, while an A means the teacher is thrilled.  Agreed.

Freddy thought about that for a few seconds, and then he said.  “Then is it right to say that it is easy to satisfy God, but more difficult to please him?” 

Whoa!  Like a boxer landing his right hook, his question caught me completely by surprise.  I didn’t even know we were discussing God or religion, and here we were already at the very heart of the matter.  Before answering I needed to take a deep breath, because his profound question had knocked it out of me.

Finally I said, “No, I think the opposite is true with God.  It is not just difficult, but impossible for anyone to satisfy God.  But it is easy to please God.” 

Can that be true?  How could it be?  God is holy, and has a perfect standard that no person, despite a lifetime of good effort, could ever meet.  All of us have sinned, and for that reason we all fall short God’s minimum standard.  Romans 3:23.  

Well, if it is impossible to satisfy God, how then could one ever please God?  We read in Hebrews 11:6 that “without faith it is impossible to please God.”  Or, to state it the other way around, we please God with faith.  And what is this faith that pleases God?  Hebrews 11:6 provides one answer:  It is a faith that believes that God exists and that God rewards those who earnestly seek him. 

And where do we get this kind of faith?  What do I need to do to get it?  Well, this faith does not come from anything that I can do.  I can’t work for it or earn it.  Instead, this faith that pleases God is a free gift given by God himself.  Ephesians 2:8-9 puts it this way:  “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”  

In other words, the only thing a person can do to please God is accept this free gift that he offers to one and all.  And when a person accepts this gift and earnestly seeks him, God is not just pleased, he is so thrilled they throw a party in heaven.  See Luke 15:10.

Well, I didn’t actually say all this to Freddy.  What I said was something like this:  “What pleases God is when you accept Jesus as your savior, and follow him, living your whole life in gratitude for God’s gift of salvation.  That is so easy anyone can do it.  In that way the good news of the Bible is revolutionary.”

Revolutionary.  Did you ever think of the Bible’s message as revolutionary?  What humans cannot possibly do, God has done for them and offers it as a gift, absolutely free to all who earnestly seek him.

God’s answer seems even more breathtaking than Freddy’s question.