Why?
Purpose Driven Life #7
Montreal/Cornwall
September 13, 2003
How much do you value your name? Do you have a good name? God tells us, in Proverbs 22.1, that to have a good name is better than great riches. I think my mother must have taken this passage literally as she often reminded my sister and I of our name and the need to watch our behaviour so we didn’t bring shame to our name. She was concerned that we reflect good things to others as we interacted in the community area in which we lived.
Well, our heavenly Father has a similar concern. Our quest in life is to bring glory to God.
Ro. 11.36- everything is for his glory. Everything is to bring glory to God. Everything is to bring positive to the name of God. WE are to bring positive to the name of God.
Glory is not something we think about a great deal- it’s not something that enters our daily vocabulary very often. However, it’s important to God. Glory has to do with all that God is. He is important, splendid, powerful, and awesome. He is good. He is the creator of everything, so everything reflects His goodness, and other qualities, in some ways. I believe that the smallest creatures, in acting and being precisely as God created them to be, show God’s glory. The dog, in being perfectly dog-like, reflects God’s glory. The same is true of any animal or creature you can name. (Now, I know we might wonder whether anything, perfectly, reflects what God intended for them since the sin in the Garden of Eden. However, overall, I believe these parts of creation are more reflective of God’s fullness and glory, in being all they were intended to be than are the two parts of creation that can actually choose to not reflect God well- these are the angels that fell, and humankind.
Otherwise, we read that the heavens declare God’s glory. We see that there is a new Jerusalem coming that doesn’t need light because God’s glory is enough illumination- there will be no blackouts then. We read that Jesus fully reflected- and reflects- God’s glory and that when He lived on earth people saw his glory in his graciousness and truth, even though they didn’t ‘connect the dots, so-to-speak’ and draw the right conclusion during his earthly life and ministry.
Paul declares:
Ro. 3.23- all fall short of God’s glory because of sin. None of us has given God the full glory he deserves from our lives. In fact, this is at the root of sin. Do you remember that John the Baptist was perfectly happy to direct attention away from himself and toward Jesus? Do you remember that, on one occasion, John said that he must decrease while Jesus must increase? That is the heart of giving glory. That is the heart of ‘not bringing shame to the family name’. When you think of it, all sin, then, is failing to give God glory. It is loving anything else more than God. Refusing to bring God glory is what Lucifer did, originally, and what Adam and Eve did in the first human sin, and is what we do when we sin. We allow pride and rebellion to guide us, rather than humility and obedience, and we glorify ‘us’ rather than ‘him’, and we do what seems right to us. We are supposed to do what seems right to Him, but we don’t, so we choose to not give glory to God.
Isa. 43.7- God created you and me to bring God glory, and that needs to be the supreme goal of our lives.
Jesus points us to how to do this better. He did it very well- perfectly, in fact- so gives us an example and pattern of how to do it.
John 17.4- see Christ’s words. Jesus honoured God by fulfilling his purpose on earth. We honour God the same way. When we, as God’s creation, and as God’s children, fulfill our purpose, we bring glory to God. When we are all we were meant to be, we bring glory to God. We look for simple ways to understand what we are supposed to be doing and, for me, one of the discoveries that has helped me very much over the past short couple of years, has been to understand five biblical purposes for our lives. These give a framework for our activity and living and show us how to be fully alive. Over the next several months, we will unpack these, but we can understand them, in overview, today. For those of us in Montreal, these are at the core of our church’s Purpose Statement.
1. We bring glory to God by worshiping him. Worship is a difficult subject in many churches right now; it has been a difficult subject, actually, for centuries, in some churches. Worship is our first responsibility to God. We are to be living sacrifices, and sacrificing is one of the oldest forms of worship. God wants us to enjoy him, so worship has us willingly and excitedly enjoying God. God doesn’t want us to worship him, or to interact with him, because of duty and requirement, but because of love and thanksgiving. We worship God because we respond to all that God has done for us. Worship is far more than singing, praising, and praying to God. Worship involves a lifestyle of enjoying God, loving God, and giving ourselves to be used for his purposes. When we live for God, everything in our lives becomes an act of worship.
Ro. 6.13b-
2. We bring glory to God by loving other believers. When we were born again, we became part of God’s family, as God intended. We are not to simply believe, but to belong. Loving one another is the proof that we’re in God’s family.
1 Jn. 3.14
Ro. 15.7- we have to learn to accept each other just as God has accepted us. It is our responsibility to learn how to love as God does, because God is love and it honours him.
Jn. 13.34-35- Jesus’ declaration of our quest.
3. We bring God glory by becoming like Christ. In other words, we seek to grow spiritually, or to mature. Spiritual maturity is becoming like Jesus in the way we think, feel, and act. The more we develop Christlike character, the more we bring glory to God.
2 Cor. 3.18- tells us that we reflect his glory more as we allow Jesus to work within us.
God gave us a new life and a new nature when we accepted Christ. Now, for the rest of our lives on earth, God wants to continue the process of changing our character. We’re to continue to grow- every day to grow. This time of year, we look at children, as they go back, to school, and recognize how much they have grown over the summer. So, God looks at us and recognizes, and wants to recognize, daily growth.
Phil. 1.11-
4. We bring God glory by serving others with our gifts. God uniquely designed each of us with talents, gifts, skills, and abilities. The way we are is not an accident. But all those abilities we have are not meant to be used for selfish purposes or reasons. They were given to benefit others, just as others were given abilities for your benefit. We are to minister to one another- we are to serve one another. This is one of the big requirements of the Christian life. We are not to be selfish and focused on ourselves, but are to go outside ourselves toward others.
1 Pet. 4.10, 11- God will receive glory as we use the gifts and talents we have.
5. WE bring God glory by telling others about him. God doesn’t want his love and purposes kept a secret. Once we know the truth, he expects us to share it with others. This is a great privilege- introducing others to Jesus, helping them discover their purpose, and preparing them for their eternal destiny.
2 Cor. 4.15- God will receive glory as more are brought to Christ. We have a role in this. This is what mission is all about. Evangelism is a part of mission, but only a part. Mission needs to be holistic and needs to serve many facets of someone’s life. Above all, though, the setting forth of the gospel has to lead- there has been quite a discussion over the years about whether the gospel message is to lead, or the humanitarian supply of needs is to lead. The gospel needs to lead, but needs to reach to many aspects of lives it touches.
Allow me to share a devotional that I read recently which speaks to this very forcefully, but from a perspective that I hadn’t thought of before:
“But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” 1 Peter 2.9
One of the chief reasons for the feeble life in the church is the mistaken idea that man’s happiness is the main object of God’s grace. A fatal error? God’s aim is far holier and far higher. He saves men on purpose that they in turn shall carry out His purpose in saving their fellow men. Each believer is appointed to be the means of imparting to others the new life he has received.
Those who are saved have the holy calling of being channels of God’s grace to others. The feeble state of the church is largely due to the fact that most Christians imagine that their chief concern is to desire and receive sufficient grace to reach heaven after death. The church must so proclaim the Gospel that each saved soul shall apprehend its message, “Saved to serve,” “Saved to save others.” “You…are a royal priesthood.”
A royal priesthood! The priestly heart is above all things a sympathetic heart, in which the love of Christ constrains us to win souls for Him. And that by virtue of two compelling motives: love to Christ, whom I shall please and honor in winning others to love Him; and love for souls, which will constrain me to sacrifice everything that others may share this heavenly life.
A priestly heart! A heart that has access to God in prayer and intercession for those who are yet unconverted. A priestly heart that, having pleaded in prayer for souls, has courage to speak to them of Christ.
This is, we might say, the ultimate of what we are to become. It’s possible only through Christ. It’s possible only through yielding to Christ. It cannot be done by our own efforts. All the areas of fulfilling of purposes will climax in this one- our worship, belonging, maturing, and serving will explode in our mission to others around us. May God enable us and empower us to do what He wants us to do.
God has a wonderful name that is to be lifted up and set up high before people. That name is one to be glorified, and we, as His children, are to bring glory to God’s name. We do not want to be guilty of bringing any shame to God. We must bring glory. God has given us five purposes to fulfill. As we do this, we will bring glory to God, which is what we’re here to do.
