Pastor's Corner

Theme of the Year: Covenant of Peace (Isaiah 54:10)
Theme of the Month: From Glory to Glory (2 Corinthians 3:18)
Topic: Giving Him the Glory (Matt. 5:16)

In Matthew 5:16, Jesus says "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." This implies that for us to have the glory of God on increasing measure in our lives we must give Him glory first. There are various ways we can give glory to God and I admonish you to pay attention to this piece.

First, Jesus clearly commands that the goal of our lives should be to live so that God gets the glory. Live so that men will see your life and give your Father in heaven glory, not you. So, it should be very clear that glorifying God is not only an act of worship on Sunday. It is a peculiar kind of living.

Second, for God to get glory from the way we live, we must be engaged in good deeds. It is not only by avoiding sins that God's people display his glory, but rather in the pursuit of good deeds, acts of generosity, works of kindness, ways of love to one another and so on. Since it is God's goal to be glorified in His people, and since Jesus says this happens when His people do good deeds, we would expect the Bible to tell us that God's goal in redeeming a people is that they might do good deeds. And this is exactly what we find. Paul says in Titus 2:14 that Christ "gave Himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of His own who are zealous for good deeds." Christ died and gives us access to the Holy Spirit to empower us for His good life.  We are empowered by the Spirit of grace that we might do good deeds and so bring glory to our Father in heaven.

God created us for His glory, and we bring him glory through our good deeds, says the Lord Jesus. So, we are not surprised that Apostle Paul emphasized this fact in Ephesians 2:10: "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good deeds, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." We are created for His glory, and created for good deeds, because it is by our good deeds that God gets glory.

Apart from good living, we must create time for deliberate effort to glorify God in worship for all His doings in our lives. True worship ascribes all glory to God alone. We can glorify God in many ways, but Scripture indicates that nothing we do delights God more than calling on His name from sincere hearts and declaring that all glory belongs to Him. Worship is a distinct activity in which we set aside other tasks and set our minds and hearts fully on the Lord, in order to receive His Word and to respond back to Him with prayer and song—in private, in families, and especially in corporate worship with other believers.

As you give God the glory in thanksgiving today and always may you grow from one level of glory to higher level of glory in Jesus name.

Amen.