Faith Pleases God Now

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe … —Hebrews 11:6

“Seeing is believing,” says the world. But to God it is the other way around: believing is to see. But in heaven everybody will see everything clearly, and there will be no faith.

At the moment of the Second Coming nobody will need faith. “Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen” (Rev. 1:7). The reason for the weeping is that the possibility of true faith is removed; all will “believe,” but such “believing” cannot be truly graced the title “faith.”

Since there will be no faith in heaven, we have the opportunity now to do what we can’t do there: to please God by faith. Faith pleases God. We might ask, will we not please God in heaven? The answer is yes, but it won’t be pleasing Him by faith! This is something we can only do now. We can never get these days back.

I want to please God now—in a way I cannot please Him then. I want to be thankful now. I can bring a measure of glory and pleasure to God now that I will be unable to do then. How? By trusting Him more and more and by thanking Him more and more.

What ought we to do now? We can always pray for more faith. Trust God now and thank Him in a way you will be glad you did when you are in heaven. We won’t be trusting God in heaven; we will be seeing Him. Therefore we won’t need faith. We must trust Him now and thank Him now.

Excerpted from Just Say Thanks! (Charisma House, 2005).