

{"id":100,"date":"2011-05-23T08:16:33","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T08:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/93632c0d-7cfb-4452-9177-aba0640f5335"},"modified":"2011-09-23T21:46:19","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T21:46:19","slug":"making-god-smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"MAKING GOD SMILE&#8230;&#8230;.."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My Pastor, Tim Thompson, delivered a wonderful message yesterday morning, The Smile of God.  It was so good I wanted to paraphrase it for you.    He opened with a great quote that should<br \/>\nopen a few folks eyes about religion; \u201cReligion is a man sitting in a church thinking about fishing,<br \/>\nspirituality is a man out fishing, thinking about God.\u201d   God\u2019s heart is touched by your compassion and your commitment, your authenticity.  Is your love for God real?  <\/p>\n<p>The Smile of God is the goal of our lives. Since pleasing God is the first purpose of our lives,  your most important task is the discovery of how to do that.  Worship is the act of  pleasing God, surrender and approaching Him in the spirit, (honesty and openness). Worship is when we love God supremely, trust Him completely, obey Him whole heartedly, and thank Him continually.<\/p>\n<p>God is not pleased with wrong motives, He is pleased with a deep desire to know and do His will.<br \/>\nWe must truly trust Him if we hope to please Him.  Another dear Christian brother, Dr. Charles Stanley, one asked me, \u201cDo you know how to make God smile?\u201d  His answer was, \u201cTell Him your plans&#8230;&#8230;\u201d   Relying on God means knowing He already has a plan for your life, and that He wants you to rest in the knowledge that  it is what is best for you.  Can we trust God with our futures?  If we can\u2019t, there is no where else to turn.<\/p>\n<p>the pilgrim<\/p>\n<p><i>*Photo Note:  D7000, 24-120 AFs-VR and processed in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.<\/p>\n<p><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Pastor, Tim Thompson, delivered a wonderful message yesterday morning, The Smile of God. It was so good I wanted to paraphrase it for you. He opened with a great quote that should open a few folks eyes about religion; \u201cReligion is a man sitting in a church thinking about fishing, spirituality is a man [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicles","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2811,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/2811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}