Living Authentically Before God: A Lifelong Pursuit

Now, Luther says we should live our whole lives, not as people seeking the cover of darkness where we have a secret life, a private life that is hidden from the gaze of our friends or of authorities, but that our lives should be lived openly in the presence of God, before the face of God, practicing a kind of consciousness of God from moment to moment. [00:04:44]

The big idea – “coram Deo” – is to live one’s life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the honor and glory of God. That’s what it’s all about. Jesus said it succinctly this way: “If you love Me, keep My commandments,” which is to say, “If you want to please Me, you please Me by doing what I have commanded you to do.” [00:05:40]

But to live this kind of life, obviously at the outset sounds rather idealistic, doesn’t it? There’s nobody that lives all of their life in the constant sense of the presence of God, and none of us is so righteous that everything we do is in submission to the authority of God and done unto His honor and to His glory. [00:06:18]

So what it means to please God is not simply to make a commitment or a vow, but to press forward through those moments and times where we are paralyzed and frustrated in our spiritual growth. Let me ask this question of other people. How many of you have ever taken piano lessons? [00:07:24]

I remember when I started taking piano lessons my mother had a big idea, and she said, “Young man, you’re going to start taking piano lessons,” and so she sent me off to this woman who was 110 years old, and she lived in a house that was 150 years old that was so musty and creaky and scary, and I had to walk over a mile through the woods and across a highway to go the house of this piano teacher whose name, incidentally, was Miss Bliss. [00:08:43]

I’ve spoken many times on the priority of the Christian life as Jesus declares it in His teaching when He tells His disciples to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these other things will be added unto you. Elsewhere, Jesus makes a very strange and cryptic statement about this kingdom of God. [00:15:21]

Jesus said, “That’s the way the kingdom is. It’s like,” he said, “a woman who has lost a coin who sweeps the entire house – turns everything upside down. She’s obsessed until she finds that coin.” I can’t imagine how Jesus was insightful enough in the first century to tell a story based on the life of my wife. [00:16:44]

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like a man who finds an extraordinary pearl that is so precious and so valuable – singular in its magnificence – that that person has such a profound passion to posses that pearl – which is more costly than any other pearl – that he goes and sells all that he has that he might posses that one single pearl.” [00:18:12]

All of those parables – the prodigal son, the lost coin, the pearl of great price – are parables that emphasize the importance of pressing into the kingdom of God – of pressing beyond the points of paralysis, the plateau where things become so difficult that we stop. [00:20:48]

Ladies and gentlemen, what pleases God is somebody who signs up for the duration, somebody who prays every day, “Thy kingdom come,” somebody who spends his life – not just the beginning of his life – his life seeking the kingdom of God. Again, Edwards made this statement: that, “The seeking of the kingdom of God is not something that unbelievers do. [00:22:32]

Finally, let me give you this one illustration of how God is pleased by those who seek His kingdom. Again, when I was a boy, I went to a movie, and I don’t remember even the exact title of the movie or who even starred in the movie. It had to do with the adventures of Robin Hood, and I don’t know whether it was Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. [00:23:43]

I see no finer parallel to the call of the Christian who would please his God than to serve the one who is now enthroned as the King of kings, and in His absence seek to please Him, to honor Him, and to obey Him. [00:26:14]