Pleasing God?

Originally I wrote this illustration for a specific friend after a conversation about what the proper motivation for pleasing God is if He already is pleased with us in Christ.  What does it mean to please someone who already delights in you? Since then it has seemed the illustration could be helpful to a wider audience as well.

“Look at me fly, Daddy!” says my three-year-old daughter Jane, as she flits here and there around the room, inspired by Peter Pan.  Why is she seeking my attention?  What is the heart behind, “Look at me, Daddy!”?  I feel assured that her frame of mind is not, “now at last I can garner my Father’s approval.”  It is only with the certainty of my approval that she has the confidence to request my attention.  The urgent plea for me to observe her is only her attempt to trigger a fresh expression of my delight.  So it is meant to be with our desire to please our Father.  To earn or deserve His favor?  Of course not.  To freshly affect the heart of Him who has adopted us at infinite cost and set His eternal affection on us?  Definitely.  We have the power to please or pain our Father.  We cannot remove His cross-rooted favor in us as His children.  But through obedience we can freely receive and know fresh and ever-deepening levels of His delight.  Even if we grieve Him through unbelief, we cannot lose His favor as His beloved children.  But when we meet His loving gaze through believing, we bring fresh delight to His heart.  Obedience that flows from faith is our, “Look at me, Daddy!”  “Therefore we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him” (2 Cor. 5:9).