WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

I remember in my younger years in ministry I used to always pray,..'God I wanna please you...I really want to please you.' I prayed this quite often. See, when I first got born again I stopped drinking, I stopped going to parties and clubs thinking this would please God. Then I started reading my Bible and dropped a few more friends thinking to myself, God is proud of me. But when I would hear the inner witness of the Holy Spirit prompt me to go pray with someone or go talk to someone I would make excuses why I couldn't go. Or I would say, God if they come around the next time I'll do it. He would instruct me to go meet with someone but I wanted to hang out and meet with my friends. He instructed me to sow into someones life...but instead of sowing into that person I would substitute them for someone else. After a season of this response to the Holy Spirit I started noticing God's spirit lifting. I noticed He was very distant from me and I couldn't figure out why. I had done all these things to change my whole life for Him and now it seems like He's leaving. Then one day I heard these words in my ears. To obey is better than sacrifice. My friends, scripture associates pleasing God with obedience not our efforts. In addition to all of those necessary changes I made I was missing one thing. What is that? That was obedience to what God told me to do. When you haven't tapped into your Jeremiah 29:11 these are the sort of things you do because you haven't yet tapped into God's designed path for you. You modify His instructions to please people instead of God, and you make excuses for not obeying thinking you should get the same result. And when you don't you're disheartened and confused. My friends pleasing God isn't by our efforts or what we think He wants. It's not in substituting what He told us to do, to do something similar. Pleasing God is obeying His instructions. Our effort is useless if it's something He never told us to do. It's not what our buddies, friends, or respected leaders told us we should or think we should do. The question is what did God tell you to do? The difference is God never asked us to do what we think would please Him but to do what He asked us which actually pleases Him. The difference is following God's instructions over simply performing religious acts. One is our effort the other is what He needs. Today is a great day to obey the Lord and not modify the instructions. Obedience to God is faith in what He says He wants. This is what pleases God. Today is a great day to please the Lord.