God’s Glory or My Good

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Bible Reading

Genesis 32
Mark 3
Romans 3

Devotional Thoughts

The Lord seems to be giving me a theme the past few days, the theme that there is nothing out of God’s control.

  • In Genesis 30 we saw God using Rachel and Leah’s jealousy, arguing, competition, bribery through sex, etc to birth the founding fathers of the Jewish nation.
  • In Esther 6 we saw God use sleepless nights, boring reading of the activities of the palace, a man full of pride and envy, and a Jew in the royal palace to save the nation from destruction.

Now, in Romans 3:1-3 God says that my unrighteousness, although it is not God’s choice for me to sin, and that He will not let my lies and sin go unpunished. He is able to use my unrighteousness to show the righteousness of God, and even cause my lying to show God’s truth, abounding to his glory.  

I don’t understand how that works, but it’s incredible how great God is. Obviously, I would hope that we would not choose to live in sin. But, we can be confident that there is nothing that we will do that is going to mess up God’s plan! God is going to be glorified whether that’s through the things I do, and he is glorified by them, or in spite of the things I do, and he is glorified by how he deals with me (like he did with Israel). I can’t mess up his plan. But, it’s so much better to be used to be instruments to display His glory, than the other way around.

As I was writing that a thought just came to mind. Which is more important? God’s glory being displayed, or God doing something good for me/in me? I just realized that I too often want to be sure that God is going to be doing something for me or in me, as a result of whatever is happening, and that is more important to me that God getting glory! When in reality, what God is doing in my life, or through me is really secondary. He does promise to work in us and through us and conform us to his son (Rom 8:28-29) but, even the work He is doing in my life is ultimately to bring glory to Himself! I think I am afraid of the thought that God may do something difficult with the only purpose being for Him to get glory from it, because that is just too hard to explain to skeptics who already thing God is just up there pulling strings.

Declarations

  1. Everything God does will, and does ultimately bring glory to Himself. God, give me the faith to believe that and rest in that! I choose today to reckon that truth to be so, and yield my thoughts of, “But God, that’s just not fair,” taking them captive and declaring them to be the lie they are. (2 Cor 10:5)
  2. I choose today to focus on God being glorified through my life. No matter what circumstances come into my life today, I choose to respond in faith, believing that this moment is an opportunity to exalt God, and bring glory to him. (1 Cor 10:31)

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