Trying to please God does not please Him

"Without faith, it is impossible to please God" - Hebrews 11:6

I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have heard people talk and preach on this verse and the emphasis has always seems to be some kind of insinuation that pleasing God is really difficult and that the goal of our life should be to please God. I have to tell you that I know that these sermons and opinions came from places of good intentions, but they were absolutely wrong. Here's the part where you might gasp and say things about how if I don't believe that we should live our lives to please God that I must not really love God. This is a distinct possibility, but maybe, just maybe it is in trying to please God that we fail to please Him. Paul writing in Hebrews 11 says that only through faith or through trust can we please God. He goes on in throughout this chapter, which is often called the "Hall of Faith" to describe men and women throughout the Old Testament who were able to please God, by trusting Him in very practical and tangible ways. Abraham left his home for a new land, Rahab welcomed the spies into her home, Moses left a palace to free his people, etc. What pleased God in each of these people was that they trusted God, they didn't obsess over pleasing Him, they made the choice consistently to trust Him.
Think back to the Garden and Adam and Eve, what was their sin? It was that they failed to trust God and what He had told them. The Fall was a result of man trusting himself and his own desires above what God said and the result was a break in that relationship with God. The creation account in Genesis says that God was pleased with His creation, so the Fall didn't change the fact that He was pleased with creation. It was trust that was destroyed in the Fall. Just as any relationship is destroyed when there is a lack of trust, our relationship with God can only be restored and healthy when there is genuine trust from us towards Him. We overcome that sin that originated in the Garden when we trust Him. Trust is not something we say, it is demonstrated in what we do and also in what we don't do.
The problem with living to try to please God is that it is unhealthy if that is our primary focus. Think about kids who obsess on trying to please their parents, never feeling like they can live up to those expectations and the guilt and shame that it brings to their lives. I have to be honest, I spent so much of my life trying to live in way that pleased God, never feeling like I did quite well enough and maybe you did too. It is in the realization that God loves us just as we are and that all we have to do is trust Him that we can find liberation from that. According to Paul, it is only by trusting God that we can please Him, then our focus must be in trusting and not in pleasing. Our focus then is on trusting Him on a daily basis, living our lives in a God-oriented way that demonstrates our trust in Him.
There is nothing you or I can do to please God apart from just simply trusting Him, living daily in such a way that acknowledges my need of Him and my willingness to follow Him even at times when I don't fully understand what is being asked of me. Start by trusting in just the small things and eventually it will help you to trust in the big things of life. God trusts you and is inviting you to trust Him, to escape the weight of expectations by trusting Him. In a trusting relationship both parties know the other person and accept and value them for who they are, allowing each other to be themselves. If you are tired of attempting to be pleasing to God and feeling like a failure, I invite you to shift your focus and just trust Him as He trusts you. It will allow God to be God and you to be you, and that's how it always should be.