Day9: Planned for God’s Pleasure

 Planned for God’s Pleasure

You created everything, and it is for your

pleasure that they exist and were created.

Revelation 4:11 (NLT)

The Lord takes pleasure in his people.

Psalm 149:4a (TEV)

You were planned for God’s pleasure.

The moment you were born into the world, God was there as

an unseen witness, smiling at your birth. He wanted you alive,

and your arrival gave him great pleasure. God did not need to

create you, but he chose to create you for his own enjoyment. You

exist for his benefit, his glory, his purpose, and his delight.

Bringing enjoyment to God, living for his pleasure, is the first

purpose of your life. When you fully understand this truth, you

will never again have a problem with feeling insignificant. It

proves your worth. If you are that important to God, and he

considers you valuable enough to keep with him for eternity, what

greater significance could you have? You are a child of God, and

you bring pleasure to God like nothing else he has ever created.

The Bible says, “Because of his love God had already decided that

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through Jesus Christ he would make us his children—this was his

pleasure and purpose.” 1

One of the greatest gifts God has given you is the ability to

enjoy pleasure. He wired you with five senses and emotions so

you can experience it. He wants you to enjoy life, not just endure

it. The reason you are able to enjoy pleasure is that God made

you in his image.

We often forget that God has emotions, too. He feels things

very deeply. The Bible tells us that God grieves, gets jealous and

angry, and feels compassion, pity, sorrow, and sympathy as well as

happiness, gladness, and satisfaction. God loves, delights, gets

pleasure, rejoices, enjoys, and even laughs!2

Bringing pleasure to God is called “worship.” The Bible

says, “The Lord is pleased only with those who worship him and trust

his love.” 3

Anything you do that brings pleasure to God is an act of

worship. Like a diamond, worship is multifaceted. It would take

volumes to cover all there is to understand about worship, but we

will look at the primary aspects of worship in this section. 

Anthropologists have noted that worship is a universal urge,

hard-wired by God into the very fiber of our being—an inbuilt

need to connect with God. Worship is as natural as eating or

breathing. If we fail to worship God, we always find a substitute,

even if it ends up being ourselves.

The reason God made us with this

desire is that he desires worshipers!

Jesus said, “The Father seeks

worshipers.” 4

Depending on your religious

background, you may need to

expand your understanding of

“worship.” You may think of church services with singing,

praying, and listening to a sermon. Or you may think of

ceremonies, candles, and communion. Or you may think of

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Anything you do that 

brings pleasure to God is 

an act of worship.

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healing, miracles, and ecstatic experiences. Worship can include

these elements, but worship is far more than these expressions.

Worship is a lifestyle.

Worship is far more than music. For many people, worship is

just a synonym for music. They say, “At our church we have the

worship first, and then the teaching.” This is a big

misunderstanding. Every part of a

church service is an act of worship:

praying, Scripture reading, singing,

confession, silence, being still,

listening to a sermon, taking notes,

giving an offering, baptism,

communion, signing a commitment

card, and even greeting other worshipers. 

Actually, worship predates music. Adam worshiped in the

Garden of Eden, but music isn’t mentioned until Genesis 4:21

with the birth of Jubal. If worship were just music, then all who

are nonmusical could never worship. Worship is far more than

music.

Even worse, “worship” is often misused to refer to a particular

style of music: “First we sang a hymn, then a praise and worship

song.” Or, “I like the fast praise songs but enjoy the slow worship

songs the most.” In this usage, if a song is fast or loud or uses

brass instruments, it’s considered “praise.” But if it is slow and

quiet and intimate, maybe accompanied by guitar, that’s worship.

This is a common misuse of the term “worship.”

Worship has nothing to do with the style or volume or speed of

a song. God loves all kinds of music because he invented it all—

fast and slow, loud and soft, old and new. You probably don’t like

it all, but God does! If it is offered to God in spirit and truth, it is

an act of worship. 

Christians often disagree over the style of music used in

worship, passionately defending their preferred style as the most

biblical or God-honoring. But there is no biblical style! There are

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Worship is far more 

than music.  

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no musical notes in the Bible; we don’t even have the instruments

they used in Bible times. 

Frankly, the music style you like best says more about you—

your background and personality—than it does about God. One

ethnic group’s music can sound like noise to another. But God

likes variety and enjoys it all. 

There is no such thing as “Christian” music; there are only

Christian lyrics. It is the words that make a song sacred, not the

tune. There are no spiritual tunes. If I played a song

for you without the words, you’d have no way of

knowing if it were a “Christian” song.

Worship is not for your benefit. As a pastor, I

receive notes that say, “I loved the worship today. 

I got a lot out of it.” This is another misconception

about worship. It isn’t for our benefit! We worship

for God’s benefit. When we worship, our goal is to bring pleasure

to God, not ourselves. 

If you have ever said, “I didn’t get anything out of worship

today,” you worshiped for the wrong reason. Worship isn’t for

you. It’s for God. Of course, most “worship” services also include

elements of fellowship, edification, and evangelism, and there are

benefits to worship, but we don’t worship to please ourselves.

Our motive is to bring glory and pleasure to our Creator.

In Isaiah 29 God complains about worship that is half-hearted

and hypocritical. The people were offering God stale prayers,

insincere praise, empty words, and man-made rituals without even

thinking about the meaning. God’s heart is not touched by

tradition in worship, but by passion and commitment. The Bible

says, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me

with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me

is made up only of rules taught by men.” 5

Worship is not a part of your life; it is your life. Worship is

not just for church services. We are told to “worship him

continually” 6 and to “praise him from sunrise to sunset.” 7 In the

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DAY EIGHT:

PLANNED

FOR

GOD’S

PLEASURE

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Bible people praised God at work, at home, in battle, in jail, 

and even in bed! Praise should be the first activity when you open

your eyes in the morning and the last activity when you close

them at night.8 David said, “I will thank the Lord at all times. My

mouth will always praise him.” 9

Every activity can be transformed into an act of worship when

you do it for the praise, glory, and pleasure of God. The Bible

says, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for

the glory of God.” 10 Martin Luther said, “A dairymaid can milk

cows to the glory of God.”

How is it possible to do everything to the glory of God? By

doing everything as if you were doing it for Jesus and by carrying

on a continual conversation with him while you do it. The Bible

says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working

for the Lord, not for men.” 11

This is the secret to a lifestyle of worship—doing everything as

if you were doing it for Jesus. The Message paraphrase says,

“Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-

work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an

offering.” 12 Work becomes worship when you

dedicate it to God and perform it with an

awareness of his presence. 

When I first fell in love with my wife, I thought

of her constantly: while eating breakfast, driving to

school, attending class, waiting in line at the

market, pumping gas—I could not stop thinking

about this woman! I often talked to myself about

her and thought about all the things I loved about her. This

helped me feel close to Kay even though we lived several hundred

miles apart and attended different colleges. By constantly thinking

of her, I was abiding in her love. This is what real worship is all

about—falling in love with Jesus. 

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Day Eight

Thinking about My Purpose

Point to Ponder: I was planned for God’s pleasure.

Verse to Remember: “The Lord takes pleasure in his

people.”  Psalm 149:4a (TEV)

Question to Consider: What common task could I

start doing as if I were doing it directly for Jesus? 

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