‘So … whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.’
One of the reasons I put off writing a blog for so long is because I didn’t want it to become about me. I felt that writing was something God was challenging me to do, I wasn’t really convinced that I could offer anything different to what was already out there and maybe I can’t but I feel it’s an act of obedience and that it is to be for ‘..the glory of God’. Even since starting writing it has been a challenge not to make it about me, it can become consuming and narcissistic. For those of you that don’t know about blogging there are features where you can check your stats and see how many people have read your blog, which continent the people are reading it on and it’s easy to become caught up in that and begin to feel that somehow it matters whether 2 people or 200 people have read it as if it is a measure of your success and a comment on who you are as a person. This was precisely what I wanted to avoid because I knew if I started this it need to be all about God. He is what is important, He is the reason I live, He is the reason I am where I am today. It is only by His grace that I am able to write and share.
The point is this I am simply an instrument. It’s like the image of the musician and his instrument, lets use the example of a violin, it can look nice but it isn’t any use or fulfilling it’s purpose unless the violinist starts to play it, then it comes into it’s own, but it isn’t the violin that is praised for being a good instrument but the violinist that is praised for making beautiful music come out and it’s no use the violin clamouring for people to praise it because actually it is only as good as the person playing it. If they are skilful then it is wonderful but if a novice is left in charge then woe betide your ears! The violin could have been made by a master luthier but again if a novice plays it the sound can still be awful. It’s the same with us He is the master creator but we are only as effective as the extent which we allow God to use us, mould and shape us and influence our actions and when he does all glory should go to him.
The world teaches that we have only made it when we are famous, or recognised for what we do. Yet all through the Bible we are taught exactly the opposite, actually our lives are representative of someone bigger than us, someone who holds the whole universe in his hands and yet I want to make it about little old me. In my previous post I mentioned how Paul called himself a Servant of God. The role of the servant is not to upstage the master but for the servant to make the master look even better. In the days when it was prevalent for the rich to have servants how well they treated guests would reflect on the master. Guests would praise the master for having his household under control. At large parties good servants would blend into the background and things would run seamlessly and the master would be applauded, not the servant.
Paul states that whatever it is we do it should be for the glory of God. We should be looking for God to be recognised in everything we do. Our actions should honour him, extend his renown in the world, not our own. At the point at which we become Christians our lives are no longer our own. We become ambassadors for Christ. We are his representatives on earth and yet how easy is it for us to make it about ourselves and what we do or have achieved.
So often we want to separate out our lives so we have our church life, our home life, our work life, or for those of us that have the luxury of getting into vast amounts of debt, our student life and we like to keep them all separate as if our faith should only affect what we do in church or Christian circles and we should only behave as if for God’s glory when we are there. Paul’s teaching challenges this so whatever we do should be for God’s glory, whether in work or in the way we talk to people. Everything we do should be done excellently, whether serving in church or doing the job we are paid for, whether committing ourselves to study or raising our children because it’s about bringing honour and praise to Him. As soon as we state we are Christians we are setting a standard that other people will judge us by.
Please don’t misunderstand we shouldn’t have a false humility and become obsessed with being invisible the opposite extreme of this is when you praise someone for anything they do and they always respond “it wasn’t me it was God” for example someone bakes a cake and you say how wonderful it tasted and they reply it’s all God, well no the reality is they baked the cake, they followed the recipe and put the ingredients together and they did it well. Or for the boys you are playing football and someone scores a terrific goal and everyone praises them and they say no that was all God, well no, you used your foot to strike the ball at the correct trajectory that put it in the back of the net. God might have given you those skills and you can glorify him for that but you do have a part to play as well. How you choose to use those skills and the attitude with which you do it should give God glory but at the same time you shouldn’t be self depreciating as it can be just as dangerous and take the glory away from God as thinking too much of yourself.
Let’s ensure that our lives reflect God that we glorify him in everything that we do and that our decisions and actions reflect him. Let us be used by him in our current circumstances and situations and make sure that the decisions we make glorify Him.
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