Over the past two or three weeks, the purpose of my entire life has shifted.
A month ago, if you’d asked me what m life was for, I’d have said something like, “to love and follow Jesus”—which would have been fantastic, but incomplete.
Today my purpose for being is more closely aligned with Christ’s reason for being: to bring glory to God. I have repented for wrapping my life around anything less.
How do I bring glory to God? Well, that’s where loving and following him jump in. But loving and following are the how, the what, the when. Bringing glory to God is the ultimate why. Once that why is settled, the question becomes, what will bring the most glory to God in this situation?
A few weeks ago I posted this status on Facebook:
I meant it then, and I mean it now. With every fibre of my being.
Glory to God
We are created for the praise of God’s glory, period. That’s not a means to an end, that’s the end of all ends, the “chief end,” as one famous confession puts it.
What I’m also learning is, to be filled with and saturated by God’s glory is also what I most crave. God’s glory is his unchanging, manifest awesomeness. When we glorify God, revelling in his glory, that brittle God shaped hole within us is filled by him, softened and completed by his presence.
I have caught a glimpse of God’s manifest glory just once, many years ago now. With flailing and failing words, the best way to describe the experience would be to say the Northern Lights were dancing in my room—except they were alive, and on fire, and infinitely more… uh… glorious.
A point to ponder: When I “give” God glory I’m really just declaring or revealing what’s already true, not adding to or taking away from his eternal glory bank. Nothing can diminish or add to God’s glory. He is glorious whether we notice or not. Although, God does sovereignly choose to reveal or withhold his glory based on how we respond to his Spirit.
I’m also learning that making glory to God our ultimate goal in life means we cannot possibly fail. If things are going well, I can give God glory. If I experience pain or become crippled by unspeakable tragedy, I can still give God glory. In fact, the harder it is to give him the glory he deserves, the more he gets.
My new prayer is becoming, “God I am determined that you will get glory out of me today.”
Will you join me in this prayer?