The Glory Of God

            I have been very challenged lately by the thought that everything we do should give glory to God. Everything meaning…everything. 1 Corinthians 10:31 says:

“Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

            God cares about something as insignificant as eating giving glory to Him? Wow. That should tell us something.

            This verse has been on my mind a lot the last couple weeks. And several times, I’ve found myself asking, What does this do to give glory to God? For someone who wants her life to glorify Christ, it’s been surprising to see how little my life glorifies Him.

            Some people might say, “It’s impossible for everything you do to glorify God”, but I don’t believe that’s true. God doesn’t ask the impossible of us. Actually, let me rephrase that: God may ask the humanly impossible of us, but He promises to give us the strength to do the impossible if we ask Him.

            If we ask him. That’s the key. So often, we don’t ask God for things, because we somehow think we can do it on our own, or that God is bothered with our requests. Which is completely ridiculous. God plainly tells us that it gives Him pleasure to give us what we ask of Him, if it is a truly good thing. So by not asking, we are actually withholding pleasure from Him.

            Some might also say that, since God asks the impossible of us, that we shouldn’t take the words literally. But considering what I just said above, we can throw that idea out the window. It brings God pleasure to give us what we ask for, so it would be illogical to assume that His words aren’t literal just because the command is humanly impossible to carry out. Also, we should know God well enough to know that when He says something, He means it. God’s not playing word games, or offering a suggestion. This verse is a command – do all to the glory of God. I believe that we need to take this seriously.

            And it is hard. It’s hard to go against your fleshly desires. But if we truly want to glorify God with how we live, and live totally for Him, then we must kill off our sinful flesh.

What would it look like if we lived exegetically? If we put aside our culture, our traditions, our preferences, and just went to the scripture to see what God says. What would our lives look like? Radically different, to be sure.

And yet, this is how we are called to live. This shouldn’t sound strange or radical; it should be how we live. God says that if we love Him, then we will obey His commandments.

Are we doing that?