“My Pleasure”: Pleasing God Over Self

Pleasure= a feeling of enjoyment; having a thing be pleasing to you.

There’s this place that I like to frequent. It’s one of the only fast food restaurants I go to now, which is so unfortunate since there is a new location very close to my apartment.

The food at this particular fast food restaurant is delicious but above that, their customer service is absolutely EXCELLENT. Every time you say “thank you”, employees at this restaurant reply “MY PLEASURE”.

My pleasure.

You may have heard of this place, lol, especially if you’ve been to the South.

 

Until recently, I’ve never paid much attention to their phrase: “my pleasure”. It was just something they always said and something I never really thought long and hard about. However, one day, I took a friend to the restaurant for the first time and he asked “What are they saying?” “Why do they keep saying that to us?”

I replied “They are saying ‘my pleasure’. As in “it is their pleasure to serve us; their pleasure to make us happy”.

*INSERT JAW DROP

What an amazing revelation I received just by explaining this phrase to my friend!

This is how we should feel about serving God. Pleasurable. It’s our pleasure to serve a God that is so, so good to us (better than we deserve).

Read Related Post: 12 Ways God Shows He’s Just That Into You

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. –Romans 12:1 

I’ve heard some people who “grew up” in the church say that when they were kids they looooovvved attending church services and church related activities. They couldn’t wait to sing songs to the Lord, hear Bible stories, connect with their friends, re-enact events in the Bible during plays, etc. Going to worship the Lord in a variety of ways was pleasurable to them.

But somewhere along the way, they stopped finding pleasure in these acts of worship. Life either got too busy or life threw them curve balls that caused them just too much pain.  Either way, it became no longer “their pleasure” to worship and serve God (either in the church house or outside of it) (either in structured activities or just through day to day tasks).

It became more of an obligation….a duty.. just something else that they “had” to do. Something else to cross off the to- do list.

Devotion time. CHECK. Bible study. CHECK. Small group. CHECK. Worship service. CHECK. Tithes. CHECK. Mission work. CHECK. CHECK. CHECK.

Where did the pleasure go?

To anyone who feels like this, I get it. I totally understand. Life gets hard. The flesh gets weak. The mind gets busy with things of the world. We obtain an appetite for worldly pleasures instead of things that please God. It happens. There’s a whole Bible warning us of this very thing and giving us examples of people who this happened to.

I’ve been told that even when you don’t feel like doing something good, do it anyway. The theory is that you will learn to enjoy doing that good thing and want to do it some more.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:9 “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him”

So today, if you’ve strayed from pleasing God—- if you’ve become more focused on pleasing yourself (with sex, with money, with selfish ambition, with anything really), I challenge you to spend some time getting back into activities that please God. Do it for a day, then a week, then a month. I guarantee you that when you do, and as you get closer/more intimate with the Lord, your appetite will change.

The stronger our relationship with God becomes, the more our “pleasures” align with His. HIS pleasure actually becomes OUR pleasure and it’s an amazing feeling.

 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light  (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth)  and find out what pleases the Lord. —Ephesians 5: 8-10

Bonus Points for anyone who can comment below which fast food restaurant I’m referring to in this blog post. Lol.

 

 

 

 

 

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