Love makes it easier
“Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (NIV) John 14:23
The word strive denotes fighting, making a huge effort or working hard. This implies there is a difficulty that has to be overcome by exercising strength. It is the pull of the flesh which makes it hard to please God so that we need to strive (Gal. 5:17).
How then do we strive to please God? A story has been told of a child who carries a big baby sibling, obviously with some difficulty. When onlookers asked him whether the baby was not too much for him to hold, he answered thus "No, she is not heavy, she's my sister". The love this child had for his sister made a hard task seem easy to do. It is a common experience for us - a new wife cooking a complicated dish for her husband, a tired mother still awake feeding her baby. We find it easy to do things for those we love, deriving joy from hard tasks.
In striving to please God, therefore, we first have to learn to love God. This love does not come all of a sudden. We first have to know what pleases God by consistent Bible study. We can find out from the Bible all that God has done for us and how much he loves us. This is how we learn to love our parents as we experience from childhood all that they do for us. We also need to spend time talking to him in prayer - as we pray in faith and God responds he becomes more real in our lives and yes, an emotional bond develops. Strong as the pull towards immorality or deceit may be, the opposite pull to please God also works to help you overcome. In time, it becomes painful to displease God. At this point, we can say, like the child, "It is not difficult to please God, we love him"!