Living to Glorify God

I absolutely love the Oscars - I love watching all of the beautiful dresses, catching up on all of the movies, and guessing who's going to win. It's such a time of excitement and glamour - even if it is only about movies. I think one thing is especially intriguing about the Oscars: acceptance speeches. It's a time for the actors and directors to talk about who supported them, what motivated them, and why they were doing what they were doing. It's interesting to hear all of the different reasons why people do what they do - some actors glorify their craft. Others do it so that they have a stage to convey other larger messages (I'm thinking Angelina Jolie - which perhaps might not be the best example...). Others seek to support their family. Some claim to do it for God. Now I realize Oscar speeches are maybe a little stupid and trivial, but I believe they raise a really important question: What is the primary reason we act the way we do in our lives?

Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. - Westminister Catechisms

What should be the primary purpose of our actions? I'm sure we've all thought about this a lot. For me, last year during the PFA ski retreat when we were asked to come up with a daily mission/purpose that we were to strike for related to God, it came down to glorifying God with our everyday actions. To glorify means to make glorious by bestowing honor, praise, and admiration. How exactly do we glorify God on a daily basis? I am certainly no expert, but here are some of my thoughts based on the definition of the word glorify.

Honoring God: I've got another definition for you - honor means to show courteous behavior towards, to worship, and to confer distinction upon. In my mind, we honor the Lord by respecting his commands and placing him first in our Life. By admitting that the Lord's commands are true and obeying him, we respect him and place him in a place of worship. More specifically, the Lord tells us to honor him with our wealth (Prov. 3:9), by showing kindness to the needy (Prov. 14:31), and to do so honestly with our whole hearts (Matt. 15:8). Honoring God means putting the Lord's plans and desires above our own.

Praising God: This one seems a little more straight forward - praising God to me seems to be thanking the Lord for all of the things He has given us and for His perfect nature. The hard thing about praising God is that it requires us to admit our our shortcomings and God's complete power over our lives. Psalm 13:6 talks about praising the Lord because the Lord has been good. While we can certainly praise the Lord for his perfect character, I think it is especially important that we remember what the w has done for us and praise him for his previous actions!

Admiring God: While admiring God certainly sound similar to praising God, to me, it is more a meditation on the perfect nature of the Lord - his love, mercy, justice, righteousness, beauty, and wisdom (and lots of others!). Admiring God helps me to remember why He is worthy of praise especially when things do not seem to be going so swimmingly at the moment. Focusing on the Lord and his perfect nature also helps us in our task to emulate him (I love Heb. 12:2 about fixing our eyes on the author and perfecter of our faith).

So today, my challenge is that we really strive to make all of our actions glorify the Lord by honoring him through respecting his plans and desires, praising him for his gifts, and admiring his perfect nature. I really love that Westminister Catechism about glorifying the Lord and delighting in him. I know I only focus on the glory part today, but more about delighting in the Lord to come...