Reflecting the Glory of One Whose Glory Should Be Recognized

They will tell of the glory of Your kingdom and speak of Your might, so that all men may know of Your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of Your kingdom. - Psalm 145:11-12

How do you measure your effectiveness in God, or should you even be thinking like this? I know it is quite popular to use a sense of reasoning about our spiritual "walk" like this:

God loves me and is all knowing. Because He is all knowing and nothing about who I am or what I do affects His love for me can I disappoint Him. After all, He knows me. He knows who I am and what I do. He made me! Therefore why should I even worry or even worse, feel guilty for being the person God made me to be


The early Church turned the world upside down in that first century. What made them so effective? Was it their theology? Was it great preaching? Was it due to one man's influence apart from Jesus? Was it an attitude reflected in the above paragraph? Could we validate that kind of thinking by any historical analysis? The answer to the last 2 questions is a simple no.

This little Bible morsel speaks definitively. It creates prophetic clarity that in a future time, God's people, would espouse a mighty message that created widespread knowledge of God, His glory and kingdom. I suggest this happened and can happen and it is what makes the the Bodies of Christ effective.

I am also convinced that it is at the core of God's heart. It is quite simple. God desires to reflect His nature and power through every individual. When this happens, the world is automatically changed because those who reflect His glory affect the world. The world "sees" God as He is.

I am also convinced we need to better understand words and their Kingdom meanings; vocabulary, if you will, from God's perspective. The Bible uses words like love, obedience, serve, servant, suffer and I am sure we flavor their meaning based on who we are and not what the Scripture clearly states what is truthfully meant; what is their fulness from God's perspective. Here is one we don't get easily: We serve a jealous God. He is a God who will not share His glory with anyone. (Check it out - It says it right there in that Big Black Book) God sets up situations in order to demonstrate His power through them and more than this to illustrate so we can get our tiny minds around his enormity. He does it. It is His doing. We might be arms and legs and a mouth in the process but it is His plan and His power that accomplishes. Why? That we might, in turn, understand just how little we make of Him and how tiny is the full grasp of our understanding about Him. And, more to the point so that through us His glory shines and people are drawn to Him!

Father God has visibly expressed His power and control and strength since the day He created man. His glory is His own. Only He can have it and express it. However, our God and Father desires to reflect His glory through you and me, so that all men may know of His mighty acts and the glorious splendor of His Kingdom and, in their knowing they would embrace their God-given and provided right to be on the inside of His love, affection, glory, grace, mercy and all of the other overly abundant joys His own should experience.

The apostle Paul understood this principle: My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power" ( - I Corinthians 2:4-5.

If you do not see His glory being reflected through your life, then you need to ask why. Of course, you also might want to study the concept of God's Glory so you would recognize it should it be expressed in your life. It might not be precisely what you are thinking at this moment. Just know this, He has promised to use you and me to mirror who He is if we will walk in obedience to His commands.

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. - Hebrews 11:6

That is an If/Then statement. There is in fact an our part and His part. You embrace it or you don't. Which will it be?

So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. "For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. "If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? "Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him! - Luke 11:9-13

As challenging as it is for you and I to understand, there is a truth here that says God does gives us a part in our relationship with Him. We get to learn, grow and become more today than we were yesterday. We are no longer under a shadow of guilt. It is not our lot to constantly wring our hands and wonder if God is pleased with us however. To do that we make His sufficiency, His power in us, His saving and redemptive skills weak. No, we just need to know we get to partner in growth so that who we are in Him shows clearly to the world naturally and draws all men to Him.

It was on my heart today...I hope it blesses yours...I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~

When God Must Love the Way I Demand! Or Does He...Doesn't He?

What Does "God Is Love" Mean?

What do we mean when we quote 1 John 4:8Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.? Or even John 3:16For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son...?

I have watched believers on all sides of the issue try and get their arms around this. Thus, it's something I'd been thinking about a lot lately. I even discussed this in my previous post a bit and if you follow me on FaceBook I've been grappling with it and so many odd ideas of God and how He must love. 

I believe the North American post-modern mind (Besides slowly fading into the sunset)  has a tendency to deal with this out of the context of how they were raised. We tend to sentimentalize God's love. Similarly Christians often ascribe human ideas of fairness to talk of God's sovereignty and how God interacts with human will and volition. We read much that ascribes human or, more succinctly humanitarian ideas of love to talk of God's love. We also speak of it singularly as if God, unlike you and I, loves always the same way with all people in all circumstances and at all times.

I am convinced that God loves everyone. But I am not convinced that He loves everyone the same way.

Here are a couple of passages from D.A. Carson's excellent treatment of this subject, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God:

I do not think that what the Bible says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is abstracted from the sovereingty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God -- to mention only a few nonnegotiable elements of basic Christianity.

Later, Carson writes:

If the love of God is exclusively portrayed as an inviting, yearning, sinner-seeking, rather lovesick passion, we may strengthen the hands of . . . those more interested in God's inner emotional life than in his justice and glory, but the cost will be massive. There is some truth in this picture of God . . . some glorious truth. Made absolute, however, it not only treats complementary texts as if they were not there, but it steals God's sovereignty from him and our security from us.

Now, I will try to be good and not state any conclusions or firm personal beliefs on the details of these matters in this post. But in the comments thread, perhaps we can hash out our differences through discussion and maybe even reach some conclusions.

In another book by Carson, a sort of companion volume to The Difficult Doctrine called Love in Hard Places, he takes on certain "hard cases." If Christians collectively believe we are to love everyone because God does, we must ask ourselves questions like:

• "What does it mean to love Osama bin Laden?"
• "What does it mean to love Saddam Hussein?"
• "Is this similar to the love you have for your mother and if different how and why?"

I ask you the same questions. Does God love everyone the same way? If not, should we?

Perhaps we should begin with a biblical example.
How do you personally interpret the following passage: - THOUGHTS?

Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad . . . she was told, "The older will serve the younger." Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
-- Romans 9:11-13