Thursday, April 21, 2016

Giving and receiving glory

To glorify God (display his infinite value/glory/worth to others) is to value God.

AND 

To value him is to glorify him i.e. when we truly value God we desire to honor Him not only by our valuing of Him itself (feeling God's value in our heart i.e. cherishing Him) but in any actions that spring forth from our valuing-cherishing Him. We are saying to others He is valuable to us by both our disposition and our actions, and therefore He would be valuable to them as well. 

To say this another way, we align our lives with what we value most and any actions that help us gain - experience - take part in what we value most. If we recognize GOD is THE most valuable "object" of all "objects" (the King of kings and the LORD of lords... The most high God), we will align our lives (how we live/act) with how to best honor him, so we might gain and take part in who he is and what he's about. To do so tells others by our actions that God is most valuable to us (and therefore possibly to them). How we live matters. People are watching, especially if we claim to know God.  

To value him is also to love him

An invitation by God to glorify Him is an invitation to be loved by him and love him in return. It is an invitation to love and value him above all things and be loved and valued by him above other created things. This is the essence of relationship with God; the receiving and giving of love/worth/value. This is the essence of God himself as Father, Son, and Spirit in relationship

To love the most lovely and recognize God is the most lovely, and most valuable is to experience and participate in the greatest love and value possible. Not only his, but ours as well. 

We were created by the all-glorious God to be in a relationship with him. In so doing we experience our own sense of worth and value. In order for us to fully enter into this relationship and fully enjoy him, we had to be created with the greatest possible capacity of seeing, experiencing, and enjoying him in all his glory i.e. We were made in the image of our Creator, created to give and receive glory-value-love just like he does within the Father, Son, and Spirit. The more completely we are like him the more fully we can - and do - enjoy him.

When we rejected God and broke away from this relationship of receiving and reflecting back to him his glory/value/love, the need for us to give and receive glory-value-love did not go away. We still need to value-love something and be valued-loved. It is how we are wired by virtue of being in God's image; the most valuable of all.  

Only now, in our state of rebellion, we seek to fill that need for love and glory with everything but God; everything created, which also happens to be infinitely inferior to the Creator. Therefore, it never works i.e. completely fulfills us. Creation is finite after all. We, however, are designed by the Eternal and created for the Infinite i.e. God almighty himself. 

There is no getting around this fact; we were made for this; for infinite glory-value-love and therefore must have it. It is the very core of our being; of who we are and were created to be.

The main issue is where do we go to best fulfill this innate aspect of who we are designed to be if not to the Designer and Infinitely glorious God himself?

Like Christ but different. How does it matter?  

Christ is the eternal and only-begotten (not created), image-bearer of God. The exact representation of his being. Heb 1:3 Col 1:15God of very God

We are the created image-bearers of God, designed to receive and give him glory just as the Son does with the Father and the Father with the Son. Jn 17:20-23

We were created by God and like God so we could fully enter into and participate in the glory received and given between the Father and Son; a glory and love entered into and united by the Spirit of love/value/glory between the Father and Son. Jn 17:1-5, 13

For some related posts, see the following:

·        Worthless rotten sinners
·        Hard wired for greatness
·        Created for glory
·        Does God value us?
·        Our worth based on what?
·        Our worth Gods glory
·        Giving and receiving glory


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Grace to you
Jim Deal