God is Pleased

The village of Tankiedougou has a population of around three thousand, a mixed group of Dagara, Mossi, and Fulani who all get along well in their simple agricultural lifestyle. They have a school and a church and a small market. They even have a well. And that's where their story begins. 

The hand pump well is the preferred spot to get water, which also means that the majority of people go there so that it's overcrowded all the time. If you aren't the first in line, you end up waiting hours just to fill up a few jugs. 

That's why some women opt to fill up at the hand dug well, which has an open top much like Snow White's wishing well. This well's water is not clean like the hand pump since anything and everything can fall in it, and the buckets used to pull water out also introduce bacteria and disease. In the dry season, the well runs almost completely dry. The muddy bottom of the well is visible, but the women still throw their buckets down, wait for them to fill up, and then dump one liter at a time of brown water into their basins. It can take them hours just to fill them. Some women even sleep at the well to assure that they are first in line to receive it. 

Everyone worries about the quality of the water they drink and whether it will be enough. They all carry the burden of finding and collecting it. 

Until today. 

On this day, clean water came to the village of Tankiedougou thanks to a partnership with Living Water International, the fundraising of Fellowship Bible Church, the prep work of our national team, the construction of our faithful mason, and the efforts of the community members who worked together to provide materials and labor.

But as I paused in the middle of the path and looked around me - seeing the men gathered around the pump to help install the pipes, the women singing and dancing with all their hearts under a nearby tree, and the children playing in the field with balloons and balls - I knew that only God could really make all this happen. He is the one bringing clean water to this village. 

After everything was installed, we held a pump dedication ceremony. It's not just about bringing clean water, but also about introducing Christ as the source of living spiritual water. "Water and the Word" is what we say. 

The people listened. They prayed. They heard. And when they pumped bright, sparkling clean water out of the brand new well for the very first time, there is no way that a single person missed the message of hope and love in Jesus Christ because that pump was saturated in it. 

As soon as we had completed the dedication and all of the activities around it, a dark storm cloud rolled in and within fifteen minutes brought with it a powerful, cleansing rain. There is nothing quite like a rainstorm on the African plain, and we watched the whole thing blow in, let loose, and roll out. The timing could not have been more perfect. It was like God was waitin for us to finish before sending the most dynamic display of his power. We inevitable got very wet, but ended up finding shelter in a mud hut nearby. 

As soon as Rebeca, a Burkinabé teammate who came with us to install the well and ended up leading the women in worship for almost three hours, entered the tiny house, she sat down with a beaming smile on her face and said, "This is how I know God is pleased with what we have done today." 

The Burkinabé see rain not as an annoyance or a hindrance, but as a beautiful and perfect blessing from God. 

I smiled and nodded because, I too, knew that God was pleased with us, but that's because I've been doing a lot of thinking recently on what it means to please God. How exactly do we find God's pleasure? 

My struggle is this: I want to please God and please people so much that it's to a fault. That whole people-pleasing thing, I just have to let that go and realize that my worth and value comes from looking to Christ and finding my identity in him and not people. But the whole pleasing God thing is a little trickier, and I am even having to rearrange my beliefs about pleasing God. 

You see, it's not a bad thing to desire to please God. The problem come when I think that I please him by what I do. If I'm doing good, he is pleased. If I'm not doing enough, then he is less pleased. 

The thing is - just like with money or alcohol or whatever addiction we have - enough is never enough. If we try to please God with our works, it will never be enough. I am living proof of that because I've left my family and my home and my country to live with the poorest of the poor and help them in the name of Jesus. You would think I would feel satisfied with what I've chosen to do for God and that I would be confident of his pleasure in me, but honestly, I don't. I still honestly don't feel like I'm doing enough. 

That's because we can never do enough. We can never earn God's pleasure, nor his favor. The Bible teaches us that we are saved by grace, not by our works. It also says, if we were saved by grace, are we not expected to live by it as well? Yet how often do I talk about being saved by grace and then live as though I am measured by my works? 

The Bible also teaches that without faith it is impossible to please God. The woman who broke her alabaster jar at his feet pleased Jesus. Mary, who chose to sit at his feet instead of stay busy with service, pleased Jesus. I can only gather one thing from all this. I conclude this truth: He is pleased when we love him. He is pleased because we put faith in him. It is out relationship with him pleases him. 

And to me, that's why God was pleased when we did the well. It wasn't the action of putting in pipes. It was the action of adoration. It wasn't the money we raised or the work we did, it was the sight of his children who love him all coming together and rejoicing in his name. It was like I could see him in heaven, looking down on our celebration and just loving us because we belong to him.

Our love for God obviously overflows into actions of service for him and for others, but it's not the works in themselves that please God. He is already pleased because we are washed in the blood of Jesus and have given our hearts to him as his residency and under his lordship. 

Think of it like a cycle. God's love made him decide (according to his foreknowledge) to sacrifice Jesus to save humanity, which brought us into right relationship with him and made us his children, which brought him pleasure. His pleasure in us and our salvation causes us to be completely satisfied in him (because we don't seek our identity or pleasure from people but rather receive it fully from him), which in turn inspires and prompts us to love his people, which causes them to know his love,which then convicts them to trust in him, which brings them into right relationship with him, which brings God pleasure...

It is a beautiful cycle where God's pleasure results in our pleasure in him, which gives him more pleasure and us more pleasure. In this we never have to worry about pleasing God because we know he is already pleased with us not based on what we've done but on what he has done. So you see, our pleasing God doesn't hang on us but on him, and he upholds himself perfectly and cannot be let down. So we don't have to worry about pleasing God, and yet we end up pleasing him more and more as we delight in having relationship with him and sharing that relationship with others. 

That is what bringing water and the Word is all about. It is about sharing the delight and pleasure that we have found in Jesus. It is about belonging to Jesus and wanting others to experience the same belonging. So we serve and we love, not to gain God's pleasure but because we know we already have it. 

And God sends the rain to say, "Well done. I am pleased with you because I delight in your salvation and I love you."