Glory part 1
I ended the last Rant series with the idea from Philippians 4:19, "But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." And the next verse says, "Now unto God and our Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen." Which got me to thinking. God has supplied all our need according to His riches in glory... and now unto God BE glory forever and ever. That's a lot of glory. And I think when we think about glory--at least in my circles--its more about winning than anything. "No guts no glory," right? So I thought we might take a few days and see what the Bible has to say about it. So let's start with the definition from Philippians 4:19 and 20. It is number 1391 in Strong's Greek Concordance and it means, "glory (as very apparent), dignity, honour, praise, worship." Which kind of does line up with the victory metaphor. Honor, praise, worship. These are things we tend to heap onto our heroes. Especially when they do something praise worthy. And that's where I think we miss the mark so often when it comes to God: We try to praise Him in order to get something from Him. That acronym PUSH (Pray Until Something Happens). I think that's totally and completely misguided. I don't think we should be down here wringing our hands trying to get God to move. Because, let's face it, He already moved. That's what the cross was. Jesus did everything He would ever need to do in order to give us everything we would ever need to have. We don't need a move of God. We need a revelation of Jesus. We need to know what that move was, and what it means to us today. And what it was, was Jesus dying and rising again. And what it means to us today is that we can live (experience) His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life by letting Him live it in us, and through us, and as us. We can experience the gift that we've been given--the Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of truth that leads and guides us into all truth... the truth that God is love and He loves you--by sharing it. We can experience God's love by giving it away. And when we look back to our key passage for this Rant series we see that God first provided... then He was given the glory He so richly deserved. It's not about getting something from God. Its about being thankful for what He's already given you. That attitude of gratitude we always talk about. His glory produces our ability to honor and praise Him. He IS praise worthy. Already. Not because of what He might do, but because of what He HAS done. So when we stop focusing on what we (think we) don't have... we can see what we DO have. And we can share what we do have. And this is the point of the whole deal of what I want to say: WHEN we share what we do have... we give Him glory. We make HIS glory very apparent. The hidden man of the heart is no longer hidden when we let what's inside come out. When we let the LOVE that's inside come out. Winning's nice... but have you ever loved someone while expecting NOTHING from them? That, friends, is glorious!