The Glory of God (part 2: God's Pursuit of His Own Glory)

In my last note (The Glory of God Through Believers), I hopefully established that God's greatest passion is His glory: the acknowledgement of His splendour and majesty. Our every deed and thought and motive should be geared towards this purpose because God's every deed and thought and motive is bent upon His renown as well. God pursues His glory in an infinite amount of ways, but for this Note I hope to shed some light on what that looks like.

God will tear down idols.

An idol is anything we put before Him, and nearly anything can be turned into one; a great theologian once said "The human heart is a factory of idols…Every one of us is, from his mother’s womb, expert in inventing idols.” But God will not take this. And let me tell you, friends, one of the most wonderfully dangerous things that you can pray for yourself or others is that God will tear down whatever is keeping you from Him.

Isaiah 42:8
I am the LORD; that is My Name; My glory I give to no other, nor My praise to carved idols.

In the first few chapters of Isaiah, the prophet speaks of Judah's wickedness and rebellion, and how God isn't impressed with their numerous sacrifices or offerings because their hearts are all wrong. Then in chapter 3 Isaiah says that God will take away their esteemed leaders and their treasured supplies and their fine goods. When God takes things away (today it might be money, a sweet car, an intense relationship, etc.), He does this for at least two reasons:
1) His throne is not to be shared with idols (what fools we are to treasure the created more than the Creator!)
2) He loves us too much to withhold from us the greatest pleasure of Himself!

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, said this:
God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."

Yes! God's passion for His glory benefits us as a byproduct! If God's first priority was to benefit us in everything He did, He would be putting something of infinitely less worth over Himself, and that is idolatry and FAILURE. So if something sad or even devastating happens in your life, don't immediately blame satan (we tend to overestimate the Enemy's power) but, rather, seek God!

Never say something like "A good God won't let your mom die" or "The LORD is in control, and you won't lose your house"; it is because God is good and in control that such things might happen. Besides, if you hold onto this false hope of "a good blessed life" it'll make God look like a liar when the cancer returns or your financial plight worsens. I'm not saying that we shouldn't pray for God to fix our problems or heal the sick, but I do hope that we all get our thoughts of Him out of a humanistic box and acknowledge that His sovereignty is always best.

One day I was really upset because I felt like God would never provide this one thing I was waiting desperately for, and I was just sitting in my room bawling and really upset about it, drowning in self-pity. Then one of my dear friends texted me and reminded that this life isn't all about me; it's about God. Even if the thing I wanted was a good thing, if I think God's plan is bent around providing me what I want when I want it, that's as foolish as thinking that the sun revolves around the earth instead of the other way around.

By now I've probably given you the impression that God is horrible and unloving and doesn't care about His people. By no means! It would be unloving of Him to put anything before Himself. If He provided us with things to find pleasure in other than Himself, I wouldn't consider those "Blessings" at all because anything found on this earth is just a cheap substitute for the presence of the Holy One! May we find all that we need in Him! Ephesians 1 says that God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing...that's more than enough!