Faith in God’s Goodness

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.     NIV

    
     If I were to ask you what’s the most important thing – what’s the thing that’s essential if you are to lead a life that’s pleasing to God, I wonder how you’d answer.

     Would you perhaps say: being religious, going to church, giving money to charity, keeping the Golden Rule, abstaining from sins, from immorality, from drunkenness, from things like that? All those things may be good, but none of them is the one essential thing for pleasing God. The one thing that God requires in all of us, the one thing without which we cannot please Him, is faith. And that faith is expressed in two ways.

     First of all, we must believe that God exists. Most of us, I suppose, in our hearts, really are aware of that. But beyond that, we have to believe that God rewards those who earnestly seek Him. You see, faith is, ultimately, faith in the goodness of God – in His reliability, in His dependability – and without that faith in God’s goodness we cannot please Him. It begins with believing in God and in His goodness. That is the root and the source of all true success and the life that pleases God.

- Derek Prince