Monday 9 March 2015

For His Glory

What is your purpose? What is my purpose? What am I doing with my life? What are any of us doing with our lives? Is this all just meaningless? No, it can’t be. Can it? I don’t think so, I have to believe we are all here for a reason. So what is that reason? 

Isaiah 43:7 says, “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” 

Oh OK super helpful, I am created for God’s glory, now I understand, right? No! Not at all, so I am created for his glory, but what is God’s glory? Do you know? Yeah, me neither! OK so I guess a good place to start would be to figure out what it means by “my glory” … and what better place to look for all lives tricky questions than Google! 

John Piper attempts at a definition:

So here is an attempt at a definition. The glory of God is the infinite beauty and greatness of God’s manifold perfections. The infinite beauty—and I am focusing on the manifestation of his character and his worth and his attributes, all of his perfections and greatness are beautiful as they are seen and there are many of them. That is why I use the word manifold. 

And then of course there is the great source of all knowledge, Wikipedia:

Glory (from the Latin gloria, "fame, renown") is used to denote the manifestation of God's presence in the Christian religious tradition.
(again to read more check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_%28religion%29)

Alright, so what have we learned? God’s glory is the manifestation, or demonstration, of God’s abounding perfections, greatness, and beauty, that is his character, his worth, and his attributes.

It seems to me that in order to know what God’s glory is, the glory that we have been created for, we need to know who God is, because we need to know his character, his worth, and his attributes. And how do we know who God is? How to we discover his character, his worth, and his attributes? I think the best place to start is, not google this time, but in his written revelation: the Holy Scriptures. Who does the Bible say God is? Well, we can’t cover it all here, as that is a life long discovery, but I think we can start…

Ephesians 2:4-9 tells us that God is rich in mercy, that he has great love, and that he has immeasurable riches of grace and kindness. 

Deuteronomy 32:4 tells us that all God’s ways are just and that he is faithful, perfect, just and upright. 

1 John 4:8 tells us that “God is love”… and 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 tells us that:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

We have only just begun scrape the surface, we could spend quite a long time unpacking what these passages mean, and I encourage you to do just that, to pull out your Bibles, or pull them up if you use an online version, and spend some significant time dwelling in and mediating on these words that tell us of who God is. 

But for the sake of this blog, and because I need to get to school, I am going wrap this up…

We are created for, that is, our purpose is to demonstrate to the world God's glory, who God is...

God is merciful. Therefore we are created to glorify God, and thus we are fulfilling our purpose, when we demonstrate mercy.
God is graceful and kind. Therefore we are fulfilling our purpose, when we demonstrate grace and kindness.
God is faithful and just. Therefore we are fulfilling our purpose, when we demonstrate faithfulness and justice.
God is love. Therefore we are fulfilling our purpose, when we demonstrate patience and kindness; when we don’t envy or boast; when we are not arrogant or rude. When we don’t insist on its own way; when we are not irritable or resentful; when we don’t rejoice at wrongdoing, but instead when we rejoice with the truth. We glorify God when we bear all things, believes all things, hope all things, and endure all things…


Whoa man tall order! But thanks be to God it is him “who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13)