Pursuing God’s favor is the wrong focus in life. You need to pursue His APPROVAL and PLEASURE instead. You want to be the kind of soul who puts a delighted smile on God’s face. Blessing the heart of your glorious King—THAT is worth something. Simply getting His favor—that is meaningless. God favors both His friends and His enemies for different reasons. Even though Yahweh despised one of the kings of ancient Babylon, He poured out great favor on the little jerk and enabled him to stomp on Israel as a form of Divine discipline. Then He talked about how much He was looking forward to tormenting the man in eternity (see Isaiah 14). Adolf Hitler is another example of a man who experienced great favor from God on earth. An unknown foreigner doesn’t succeed in brainwashing an entire country into worshiping him without a whole lot of Divine assistance. We don’t like to associate God’s favor with the Nazi concentration camps, but from the perspective of the Nazis, they were being majorly blessed as they rapidly exterminated millions of people. Did the fact that God gave Hitler such raging success mean that He was pleased with the man? Not hardly. Do you see how problematic it is when we assume that God’s favor is evidence of His approval? The two things often have NOTHING to do with each other.