By Andy Foster
[ What something awe inspiring thing you have seen, heard? What makes something awe inspiring?]
Things of intrinsic beauty take us beyond ourselves and direct us toward the essence and glory of God.
We are moved by those things or events that transcend us.
We are rightly turned before God to have a right understanding of the creature–Creator relationship. We understand the psalmist when he exclaims…
Ps 57:5 5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth
God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. Enjoying and displaying are both crucial. If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism.
The Bible is crystal-clear: God created us for his glory. says the Lord, “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory” (Isaiah 43:6-7).
[ What does it mean to glorify? ] exalt, reveal, honor
“Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
To honor God is…
to understand that we have nothing that is not God’s I Co. 4:7
1 Cor 4:7 For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?
to understand that we were created for His good pleasure and exist for His glory.
Eph 1:11-13 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.
Phil 1:10-11filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God.
To understand and yield to the fact that the Giver gets the glory
1 Peter 4:11 If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Life is wasted when we do not live for the glory of God. And I mean all of life. It is all for his glory. That is why the Bible gets down into the details of eating and drinking. We waste our lives when we do not weave God into our eating and drinking and every other part by enjoying and displaying him.
God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. He created us and called us to make him look like what he really is. This is what it means to be created in the image of God. We are meant to image forth in the world what he is really like.
Do people go to the Grand Canyon to increase their self-esteem? Probably not. This is, at least, a hint that the deepest joys in life come not from savoring the self, but from seeing splendor. And in the end even the Grand Canyon will not do. We were made to enjoy God and make Him Known.
[ What makes you really happy? ] - [ What is your passion? ]
[ Do your desires for happiness and comfort come into conflict with God’s glory?]
What was life about? What was it for? Why do I exist? Why am I here? To be happy? Or to glorify God? It seems that these two were at odds. Either you glorify God or you pursue happiness. One seemed absolutely right; the other seemed absolutely inevitable. That can lead to frustration.
To be happy? Or to Glorify God?
But if we claim to enjoy his excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God enthralled joy is to overflow and expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.
C. S. lewis God finds “…our desires not too strong but too weak”
“God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him”
Know matter the circumstance we are to bring glory to God and be a platform in which He is exalted.
How does this manifest itself in our prayer life?
Ps 50:15 15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me."
We call upon God that He would be honored and glorified.
We see this in Elijah’s prayer in the midst of the prophets of Baal.
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1 Kings 18:36-37 36 At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: "O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. 37 Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."
We see this in King Hezekiah when surrounded by the Assyrian army.
2 Kings 19:19 19 Now, O LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O LORD, are God."
We see this exemplified in our Savior Jesus Christ.
John 14:12-13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.
We are all bent to believe that we are central in the universe. How shall we be cured of this joy-destroying disease? Perhaps by hearing afresh how radically God-centered reality is according to the Bible.
Both the Old and New Testament tell us that God's loving us is a means to our glorifying him. "Christ became a servant ... in order that the nations might glorify God for his mercy" (Romans 15:8-9).
God has been merciful to us so that we would magnify him.
We see it again in the words, "In love [God] destined us to adoption ... to the praise of the glory of His grace" (Ephesians 1:4-6). In other words, the goal of God's loving us is that we might praise him. One more illustration from Psalm 86:12-13: "I will glorify your name forever. For your lovingkindness toward me is great." God's love is the ground. His glory is the goal.
“I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him. I ended asking Him to do His work through me” – Hudson Taylor
God’s Glory is the Goal
This is shocking. The love of God is not God's making much of us, but God's saving us from self-centeredness so that we can enjoy making much of him forever. And our love to others is not our making much of them, but helping them to find satisfaction in making much of God. True love aims at satisfying people in the glory of God. Any love that terminates on man is eventually destructive.
The death of Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression of divine love:
[ Why did Christ die on the cross? ]
"God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Yet the Bible also says that the aim of the death of Christ was "to demonstrate [God's] righteousness, because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed" (Romans 3:25).
But notice that this ultimately loving act has at the center of it the vindication of the righteousness of God. God exalts God at the cross. If he didn't, he could not be just and rescue us from sin. But it is a mistake to say, "Well, if the aim was to rescue us, then we were the ultimate goal of the cross." No, we were rescued from sin in order that we might see and savor the glory of God. This is the ultimately loving aim of Christ's death. He did not die to make much of us, but to free us to enjoy making much of God forever.
We are in danger of turning Christ’s Love and Sacrifice into means of self esteem and stable mental health. It is profoundly wrong to turn the cross into a proof that self-esteem is the root of mental health.
The cure for this bondage is to see that God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act. In exalting himself – Grand Canyon-like – he gets the glory and we get the joy. The greatest news in all the world is that there is no final conflict between my passion for joy and God's passion for his glory.
The knot that ties these together is the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Jesus Christ died and rose again to forgive the treason of our souls, which have turned from savoring God to savoring self. In the cross of Christ, God rescues us from the bondage of self to be satisfied in God alone.
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