A Great deal of our time is spent in the endeavor to please others—employers, relatives, or friends. But too often personal advantage is the motivating force of these efforts, and therefore they lack the spiritual afflatus which accompanies unselfed labor. The task of pleasing men is a precarious one, dependent for success upon elements and circumstances generally beyond human ability to foresee. The desire to provide or to achieve personal satisfaction is a poor augury for success in any line of endeavor.
The selfish desire to gain human approval must give place to the higher ambition to do that which is acceptable to God, that which is in accord with the divine Principle or cause of all existence. The possibility of incurring human displeasure or offending personal relationships holds no terror for the individual whose whole heart is given to the desire to please God.
According to the Biblical record in the fifth chapter of Genesis, the patriarch Enoch, father of Methuselah, lived three hundred and sixty-five years and then "walked with God." The letter to the Hebrews states clearly the meaning of walking with God and records the results of such close communion. We read (11:5), "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God."
