Pleasing God

      Each morning, I get up and then prepare to write the devotion for the next day.  In the process of doing this, I go by the news events, see if there are any new prayer requests in my email and turn on facebook to prepare for pasting the devotion on my page.  I do it almost every day and it usually doesn't take a lot of time to do it.  This morning, I read a couple of articles that were disturbing as the articles were about leaders in a large church denomination that had been involved in sin for years.  It was disturbing because no one was doing anything about it.  We find that we are always good at making excuses for sin around us and even the sin that we ourselves commit.  While being an associate pastor, we had an evangelist, a well known pastor from another church, come to preach our revival services.  Several years later, this same pastor was found sitting in a vehicle near the river in his home area distraught over the fact that the lady with whom he had been having an affair for years, was now having an affair with someone else.  He eventually resigned his church and went back to his former profession.  My thoughts at the time were, "Well, what would you expect?"   Proverbs 6:16-18  says, "These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:  A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,  An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,  A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."   

      God is never slack about naming the conditions that offend Him.  We can find lists like this one throughout the Bible.  We can simply say that it is sin and we are all guilty.  As the Scripture says, There is no one that is righteous.  All have sinned.  We are sinners and there are some who have been saved by grace.  We also find that there are many who fall into sin later and ruin their testimony and do more for hindering the work of the gospel than helping it, or advancing it.  The above list gives us some characteristics of someone that is really disgusting in the eyes of God.  He says so.  He says that these things are what He hates and lists seven different characteristics.  We find that the list of people that are involved in these things are political leaders, church leaders, professional people, sports idols and virtually all of the common folk in the community.  After all, there is none righteous, no not one.   We should all take a look at our own lives and then repent of the sin that we find.  And, if you say that you look and don't find anything, you probably have not looked long or hard enough.  None of us are perfect.  There is a need to begin the process of repentance for a nation in our own lives first.  We get too involved in looking at the condition of others and fail to see our own lack of righteousness.  It is God Who has set the standard.  We know, by looking at the words of Scripture, what pleases Him and what disgusts Him.  Which will you make for a pattern in your life?  Praise God for His righteous standards that are based upon His Word to us.