What Does God Want?

“What does God want?”

The Bible reveals the heart of God, and I found some key points in the opening chapter of the book of Isaiah.

“Stop bringing meaningless offerings.”

The people were bringing their appropriate offerings to God, but they were fooling themselves into thinking this pleased God.  It did not.  Why not?  Doesn’t He desire, and even command us to bring offerings?  Yes.  But our offerings must flow out of our righteousness, out of our growing walk with the Lord.  Their offerings did not.  So this is the heart of God:  Offerings are meaningless to Him if we give them alone, without giving Him our own heart first.

What does God want?  Our hearts.  Our lives.  The complete surrender of our being to His Lordship.

“Stop doing wrong.”

This sounds simple enough, but what is “wrong”?  Right and wrong are defined by God and God alone.  If He says something is wrong, we must not do it.  We sometimes think of wrong as illegal, which means that if it’s legal, it’s O.K.  Not necessarily.  We need to define wrong exactly the way God does.

What does God want?  He wants us to stop doing what He says is wrong to do.

“Learn to do right.”

I like the point that we must “learn” to do right.  How do we learn something like golf?  We practice it.  We read about it.  We talk about it with others.  We even go to a teacher for help.  Likewise, how do we “learn to do right”?  We practice it.  We read about it.  We talk about it with others.  We even go to a teacher for help.  A lot of times, doing right just doesn’t seem to come naturally for us.  So we must work at learning to do right.

What does God want?  He wants us to go out of our way to educate ourselves in the art of doing what is right.

“Encourage the Oppressed”

How much do we go out of our way to encourage people?  I hear too much about people in depression and people on medication.  I think a better cure would be for us to encourage one another more.  One preacher said, “This is not a bump in the road, this is a bumpy road.”  With all the blows life has a way of dealing, we need to be there for each other.  We all know that trials are much simpler if someone is going through it with you.  

What does God want?  He wants us to find someone that’s in a rough spot and bring them some encouragement.

I’ll stop here, but I recommend you continue this study on your own by reading Isaiah chapters one through five and look for the heart of God.