To God Be the Glory

To God be the glory. What on earth does that mean?

When I was younger, I would always hear people saying we are doing ____ for God’s glory. We are playing soccer, singing, working, volunteering, etc. for His glory, but I never knew what it really meant. Abstractly it made sense, but from a practical every day life aspect, it did not.

One day, God taught me it through a combination of people in my life wand it finally made sense to me. Some synonyms for the word glory are worship, credit, praise and honor. Not only was this concept amazing and God is so deserving but also I found out I could do it numerous times a day!

The purpose of marriage is to glorify God. You devote and vowel your whole life to another person just as Jesus promises to the church (His followers). In marriage, there is this concept of dying daily to yourself. Our flesh tells us to get what we want from our spouse by whatever means necessary. It tells us we deserve a break; they need to work harder and love me better. It tells us to control them so we get the actions and outcomes that best serves our desires. It tells us to instead of giving grace, to hurt them back and make them pay for their wrongdoings to us.

Each time we deny our flesh and do what the spirit wants us to do we glorify God. He is the one who gives us strength to deny our flesh and listen to our Spirit. The by product of listening to your flesh is immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing (Galatians 5:19-25). But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control (Galatians 5: 22-23).

Each time we do not sin and rather choose love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness God gets glorified. When someone asks us why we love and we say because Jesus first loved us (1 John 4:8.) He gets glory. When we are amazing at sports and we thank God for our talents He has given us, we glorify Him.

He Takes Our Place

Jesus came down from heaven in the form of a human to become our sin, even though He never sinned. He then was mocked, spit on, and brutally murdered and died to pay our debts. He rose again the third day proving He beat death and is the most powerful. He loves us even in the midst of our sin. He wants a relationship with us. He wants to use us. He wants us to be a part of His plans even though he doesn’t need us. That kind of love deserves all the praise and worship. I pray that we can accept Jesus into our lives and glorify Him each day in this way. For it is the kindness of Jesus that draws people to Him.