Do you have a junk drawer?  What is the most retrieved thing you get out of your junk drawer?  For me it is my letter opener.  If you saw it you would wonder what else I use it for because it is not in the greatest shape.  The end of it is bent in an "s" type shape.  I've used it to pry things apart, screw things in, poke holes in bubble wrap, and many other things.  I've had to try to bend it back in shape.  It's rather dull when it comes to opening letters so I am getting to the point of just discarding it and getting a new one.   

   Things are made for a purpose and it is good to remember when we fail to use things for their purpose we end up destroying them.  The thing becomes useless.  As you will see in this section, we are made for a purpose.  What do you think happens to us if we don't use ourselves in line with our original intent?  

This is a review of John MacArthur’s book Keys To Spiritual Growth with comments and study questions along the way. Feel free to study along and answer the questions or ask your own in the comments section below to enrich our learning. To go to the start of this series click here.

3 THE MASTER PLAN – How to Glorify God

Cincinnati newspaper printed an item about a local woman who pulled up at a stoplight and noticed the car in front of her was sporting a HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS bumper sticker. The woman gave a friendly toot on her horn and was shocked when the driver in front of her turned angrily and flashed an obscene gesture.

Lesson number one in how to be a good testimony: Don’t do that!

Too many in the church today seem prone to reduce their faith to bumper-sticker expressions – as if aphorisms and symbolism could somehow convey to our world the majesty and glory of our God. Of course they can’t; glorifying God is more than pasting an adage on your car – even if you drive with good manners.

How does a person glorify God? It’s not a theoretical or trivial question. In fact, no question is more practical or more significant. The supreme purpose in life for any man or woman – for anyone who has ever been born into this world – is to glorify God. That is what living is all about. It is the end result of the Christian life.^[1] Spiritual maturity is simply concentrating and focusing on the Person of God until we are caught up in His majesty and His glory.

Why Glorify God?

Let’s look briefly at the why before we get to the how. The most obvious reason to glorify God is that He created us. Psalm 100:3 states it simply: “…It is He who has made us….” Compare that with Romans 11:36: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” Why does God deserve glory? Because He gave us our being, our life, and everything we have and are. That is reason number one.

Second, we ought to glorify God because He made everything to give Him glory. Creation shows His attributes, His power, His love, His mercy, His wisdom, and His grace.^[2] All creation gives Him glory. The stars do: “The heavens are telling of the glory of God…” (Psalm 19:1). Animals do: “The beasts of the field will glorify Me…” (Isaiah 43:20). The angels do: At the birth of Christ they said, “Glory to God in the highest…” (Luke 2:14). Things that are lower in the rank of creation than man glorify God. Angels, who are higher in rank than man (Hebrews 2:7) glorify Him, too. Can we do less than give Him the glory due His name?

God even gets glory out of unbelievers who do not choose to glorify Him. Chalk this up as reason number three: God judges those who refuse to glorify Him. A good example is the pharaoh who was on the throne at the time God miraculously released Israel from the Egyptians’ cruel bondage. This man fought against God to the bitter end. But God declared, “…I will be honored through Pharaoh…” (Exodus 14:17). And He was; His power was demonstrated even in Pharaoh’s death. Sooner or later, everyone will give God glory – willingly or unwillingly.

How to Glorify God

I would like to suggest thirteen practical ways – not in any particular order of to glorify God.

Receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior.

Trust Christ. That’s basic. You cannot even begin to give God glory until you come to Christ. Up to that point, you haven’t acknowledged God. To come to Christ is to give Him glory: “Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-1 1). God is glorified when we bow and confess Jesus as Lord. If you want to give God glory, begin here.

Make it the aim of your life to glorify God.

God’s glory must be our primary goal in everything. You will never glorify God in your life until you aim at it. The command in 1 Corinthians 10:31 is all-inclusive: “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” We are commanded to glorify Him even when we eat and drink! How much more should we seek to glorify Him in the important things of life? That is what is meant by aiming at His glory. Our Lord said, “I do not seek My glory…” (John 8:50). In other words: “I live to bring God glory; I live to radiate His attributes. I live to adorn the doctrine of God. I live to exalt God in the eyes of the world. This is the purpose of My life. ”

The first principle of aiming for the glory of God is to be willing to sacrifice self and self-glory. Hypocrites come along and try to steal the glory of God. They want a little glory for themselves. Remember the alms givers whom Jesus warned about in Matthew 6:1-4? ‘When… you give alms,” Jesus said, “do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be honored by men” (Matthew 6:2). Can you imagine that? This fellow carries along a trumpeter to play a little fanfare as he arrives at the Temple to drop his coins in the box. “Here I am, folks. See me?” Plunk, plunk. Note that the Lord said they did it so men would honor them. God does not reward the kind of giving that competes for His glory.

Even sincere Christians have to beware of trying to steal glory from God. A young man once came up to D. L. Moody and said, “Mr. Moody, we’ve just been to an all-night prayer meeting. See how our faces shine!” Moody quietly replied, “Moses knew not that his face shone” (see Exodus 34:29). Straight stuff! Don’t try to take any glory from God. You can’t get it anyway, and you’ll lose God’s blessing as well.

Prefer Him above all else.

Another way to aim your life to the glory of God is to prefer Him above all else. Place Him above all things – money, fame, honor, success, friends, even family. I can think of times when I have gone to speak somewhere, and in the back of my mind I find myself thinking, I hope they like me. My, I’ll bet they really like me. That is disgusting. If what I say is not for the glory of God, but for myself, I might as well shut my mouth. If I teach a Bible study for my own glory, God’s blessing is not on it. We must prefer His glory above everything else.

Note: you’ll probably have to pay a high price in order to maintain that perspective. It may even cost you some friends. In Exodus 32 some people paid just such a price. In an orgy of idolatry at the foot of the mountain, the Israelites built a golden calf and began to worship it in a wild, raucous manner. This occurred while Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments, just after the people had promised to obey God alone! When Moses came down and saw it, he was angry. He said, “…Whoever is for the Lord, come to me!…” (Exodus 32:26). All the sons of Levi, the priests, came forward. Then Moses said, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor” (Exodus 32:27). Would they carry out that order? They did, and 3,000 fell (Exodus 32:28). You see, the glory of God was at stake. And God shares His glory with no other. These people had to pay the price of actually killing those they loved – for the sake of the glory of God.

Be content to do His will at any cost.

Another crucial way of aiming at God’s glory is to be content to do His will at any cost. Jesus prayed, “Now My soul has become troubled and what shall I say, “Father, save Me from this hour”? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Thy name…” (John 12:27, 28). And in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed, “Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me yet not My will, but Thine be done” (Luke 22:42). In other words, “Father, if You are going to get glory out of this, I submit to it. Glorify Your name, Father, whatever it costs Me.”

Aiming at God’s glory also means that we suffer when He suffers – we hurt when God is dishonored. Remember Psalm 69:9: “For zeal for Thy house has consumed me, And the reproaches of those who reproach Thee have fallen on me.” David was saying, “I hurt when God’s name is reproached.”

I remember receiving a letter from a seventeen-year-old girl whom my sister had the privilege of leading to Christ. The problems in her background were just unbelievable. After receiving Christ, she had to return to her home in a distant city, with no Christian friends, no spiritual instruction, with nothing except her Bible and people praying for her. Several months later she wrote:

I hope everything is well with you. I have really begun to put things together in the Bible. By reading the Old Testament I have been able to see that God deserves much more recognition than He’s getting. I can see how He gave people so many chances and how they continued to break His heart by worshipping idols and sinning. God wanted the Israelites to sacrifice lambs, goats, oxen and things like that as an atonement to Him for sin. He is God, after all, and He had to have some payment for the trouble and the sins of men.

To chink that God actually talked and was in the visible presence of these people and yet they kept on complaining and sinning! I can almost feel the unbearable sadness that God feels when someone rejects and doesn’t glorify Him. He’s God! He made us. He gave us everything. We continue to doubt and reject Him. It’s awful! When I think of how I hurt Him, I hope I can someday make it up.

I have a soft spot in my heart for God. I can feel His jealousy now when I see people worshipping idols and other gods. It’s all so dear to me that God must be glorified. He deserves it, and it’s long overdue.

I can’t wait to just tell Jesus, and thus God indirectly, that I love Him and just kiss the ground He walks on because He should be worshipped. I want God to be God and to take His rightful place. I’m tired of the way people put Him down.

All by herself, with her Bible and the Holy Spirit, that young girl came to realize that the glory of God was what life was all about. I know some people who have been Christians for decades and haven’t learned this truth. The purpose of our existence is to give God glory, and part of that means hurting when He is reproached.

Be content to go unrecognized as long as God gets the glory.

If you would aim at God’s glory, you must also be content to go unrecognized as long as God gets the glory. The life of Paul gives us an excellent illustration. His great goal was to exalt God through Jesus Christ. He did that actively until the time came when he was shut up in prison. Had that happened to us, we might have considered ourselves to have been shelved. But Paul took it in his stride, because he was trusting God that even this would be a means of glorifying Him. And it was. Paul was used of the Lord while in prison to write several of the books of the New Testament. His ministry during those difficult days still reaps a harvest nearly two millennia later!

But while Paul was being held, those on the outside were seeking to hurt him. He described them as those who “proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment” (Philippians 1:17). That could have been painful for Paul. While he was confined in that rotten prison, others were free on the outside – free to preach, free to teach, and free to win the love of those brought to Christ.

How did Paul react? “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice” (v. 18). The apostle didn’t care who got the credit, as along as the Lord was glorified.

How about you? What are your inner feelings when someone gains honor at your expense? How do you react? One mark of spiritual maturity is being willing to let others have the credit. How you respond will reveal whether you are concerned with His glory or with your own.

Questions & Notes

1. What is the end result of the Christian life? ↑
2. _________ shows His attributes, His power, His love, His mercy, His wisdom, and His grace. ↑

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