Glory. What does it mean to give God the glory? I’ve been learning a lot of what this means in theology or rather in ones doctrine for a few years now but recently I’ve been able to experience the glory of God with more depth of insight. This discernment has come after some of the most spiritually depressing months that I’ve ever encountered but I think that that’s how I’ve come to this place. It was at that point when I longed for God with a magnitude of despair that I never imagined I could have as a believer that I learned that that magnified the glory of God in my life. That I could still hope for His return in fact that I could long for it as Psalm 42 describes itself (which was also how I was walking for 3 months) that taught me how He is glorified when I am weak. To continue on in the ministry He has me in here while going through that glorified Him in my life. As I was calling and longing for Him I tapped into something that cannot be so easily quantified yet has been so monumental to me that I can now see an awakened passion apart from my immature mind set. I have been impassioned to grow up into that woman that God has called me to be. A passion meant not only for me but for all women especially those who place their trust in Jesus. To be a woman that doesn’t seek to serve selfishly but in all relations to ask “How can I serve you? How can I make the most of this relationship?” Most importantly, for me, this must reflect in my relations with co-workers. I am learning that I must strive toward humility so as to regard everyone as more important than myself. Remembering in the midst of difficult times that love does not take into account a wrong suffered. That love is unconditional but wise. Sigh, in light of my life and my depravity I’m inclined to quit as I am faced with such a mountainous task but I am learning that with Christ in focus or rather as I abide in Him the burden really is light (matt. 12:30)
I’m learning that to live for God’s glory is to live zealously for the good works He has created us in Jesus Christ for. (Here is a list of some verses that have really impacted my heart on this.) AND get this…living for God’s glory satisfies our ultimate desire to be noticed, seen, loved and cared for but by none other than God himself who gives these things perfectly! In The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis he points out some pretty amazing things in reflection to this desire. Below is a rough excerpt of some of the things he points out:
“Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one seems wicked and the other ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity. As for the first, since to be famous means to be better known than other people, the desire for fame appears to me as a competitive passion and therefore of hell rather than heaven. As for the second, who wishes to become a king of living electric light bulb? When I began to look into this matter I was stocked to find such different Christians as Milton, Johnson and Thomas Aquinas taking heavenly glory quite frankly in the sense of fame or good report. But not fame conferred by our fellow creatures—fame with God, approval or (I might say) “appreciation’ by God. And then, when I had thought it over, I saw that this view was scriptural; nothing can eliminate from the parable the divine accolade, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” With that, a good deal of what I had been thinking all my life fell down like a house of cards. I suddenly remembered that no one can enter heaven except as a child; and nothing is so obvious in a child—not in a conceited child, but in a good child—as its great and undisguised pleasure in being praised. Not only in a child, either, but even in a dog or a horse.Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years. prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures—nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator. I am not forgetting how horribly this most innocent desire is parodied in our human ambitions, or how very quickly, in my own experience, the lawful pleasure of praise from those whom it was my duty to please turns into the deadly poison of self-admiration. But I thought I could detect a moment—a very, very short moment—before this happened, during which the satisfaction of having pleased those whom I rightly loved and rightly feared was pure. And that is enough to raise our thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex for ever will also drown her pride deeper than Prospero’s book. Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself; “it is not for her to bandy compliments with her Sovereign.”
…In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised…
…It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is…
…Glory, as Christianity teaches me to hope for it, turns out to satisfy my original desire and indeed to reveal an element in that desire which I had not noticed…
…We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.”
So, this light burden has taught me a lot and challenged me in many ways. In fact I find it rather preposterous to weigh what God has done for me next to who I am. One day we will all face God and to be in that place and be accepted is a feat in and of itself but to desire for God to say “Well done my good and faithful servant” is preposterous and yet it is the desire He has placed in me. For the almighty to look at me and delight in his creation is a thought beyond my comprehension but a hope that I can only have through Christ. The reality is that only through a life lived for Christ will He ever delight in me and that is what gives me any sense of sanity in all of this. For it is Christ in me..what Christ makes me to be that could ever please God. To glorify God is to obey Him making me more like Him that He may be honored as I reflect Him. In other words…as He is glorified in me I am glorified in Him…forever!
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