A Quote by Victoria Osteen
I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God—I mean, that’s one way to look at it—we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we’re happy. That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. So, I want you to know this morning: Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?
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Do good 'cause God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you're not doing it for God, really. You're doing it for yourself because that's what makes God happy.
When you come to church, when you worship Him, you're not doing it for God really. You're doing it for yourself, because that's what makes God happy. Amen?
When we obey God, we're not doing it for God... we're doing it for ourself. Because God takes pleasure when we're happy.
It is impossible for any rational creature to be happy without acting all for God. God Himself could not make him happy any other way... There is nothing in the world worth living for but doing good and finishing God's work, doing the work that Christ did. I see nothing else in the world that can yield any satisfaction besides living to God, pleasing Him, and doing his whole will.
The difference between the truth of God and revelation is very simple. Truth is where God's been. Revelation is where God is. Truth is God's tracks. It's His trail, His path, but it leads to what? It leads to Him. Perhaps the masses of people are happy to know where God's been, but true God chasers are not content just to study God's trail, His truths; they want to know Him. They want to know where He is and what He's doing right now.
Any praise I receive does not change me, for I pass it right along to God. I walk because God gives me strength to walk, I live because God gives me the supply to live, I speak because God gives me the words to speak. All I did was to surrender my will to God's will. My entire life has prepared me for this undertaking. This is my calling. This is my vocation. This is what I must be doing. I could not be happy doing anything else.
Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish.
Appearances can be deceptive. The fact that we cannot see what God is doing does not mean that He is doing nothing. The Lord has His own timetable. It is we who must learn to adjust to it, not vice versa. When God's time comes nothing will stand in His way. We can therefore wait for Him with this happy confidence: "As for God, His way is perfect" (2 Samuel 22:31).
Self-confidence means thinking all the time, "God is in me... God is doing everything . . . without God I cannot be . . . all this is God . . . I only want to think of God."
A true God chaser is not happy with just past truth; he must have present truth. God chasers don't want to just study from the moldy pages of what God has done; they're anxious to see what God is doing.
Sunday morning in America is the greatest hour of idolatry in the whole week. Why? Because most people who are even worshiping God, are worshiping a God they don't know. They're worshiping a god that looks more like Santa Claus than the God of Scripture. They're worshiping a god that is a figment of their own imagination. They created a god in their own likeness and they worship the god they've made.
The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works but rather the way God is. Cheek-turning is not advocated as what works (it usually does not), but advocated because this is the way God is - God is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. This is not a stratagem for getting what we want but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God wants. We seek reconciliation with the neighbor, not because we feel so much better afterward, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the world through Christ.
Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who as a heaven for every body, but a hell for none; a God who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and broad in eternity. Such a God is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible there is no God at all.
This I know; God cannot sin, because his doing a thing makes it just, and consequently, no sin.... And therefore it is blasphemy to say, God can sin; but to say, that God can so order the world, as a sin may be necessarily caused thereby in a man, I do not see how it is any dishonor to him.
God's on the outside looking in. He doesn't have any legal entree into the earth. The thing don't belong to Him. You see how sassy the Devil was in the presence of God in the book of Job? God said, 'Where have you been?' Wasn't any of God's business. He [Satan] didn't even have to answer if he didn't want to ... God didn't argue with him a bit! You see, this is the position that God's been in Might say, 'Well, if God's running things He's doing a lousy job of it.' He hadn't been running 'em, except when He's just got, you know, a little bit of a chance.
When God does a miracle somehow you have to respond. When God does things for you - maybe we don't deserve them and we can never really repay God but God really wants us to respond to them. He doesn't want us to stay the same. So, for us to respond to what God has done in our lives is probably the same way he would want anyone to do - "Just tell people what I've done for you and what you've seen and heard." That's what we're doing.
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