Glorious

A major theme in my life (well, in everyone's life, really) is the glory of God. I've thought a lot about this topic, but over the last five months, God has shown me even more about what His glory is.

For a long time, I thought that glorifying God was my responsibility. If you've read this blog for any period of time, you know that I frequently try to justify myself, to prove myself worthy of salvation, to show God that He didn't make a mistake in saving me, that I will make it up to Him. And He continually reminds me, "Sara Beth, you cannot make it up to me, nor do I ask you to. I love you and I will never leave you. You are mine, and I delight in making you new."

I realized last semester that God cannot get more glory than He already has. I wrote a whole blog post on this that you can read here. Essentially, God has all the glory. He is the only One worthy of glory, and all glory that exists is His.

Man's purpose is to glorify God and love Him forever. My favorite definition of glorify is, "Reveal or make clearer the glory (of God) by one's actions." So how does my life reveal His glory?

The way that God's glory is most revealed is through the salvation process. When I choose to follow Jesus, God is glorifies. The fact that God left His heaven and His throne to come to earth in the form of Jesus, to among man, to live a perfect life, to die my death, and to overcome the grave in order to set me free and draw me to Himself is pretty mind-blowing. God gives me the choice to follow Him, but it is not me choosing salvation that reveals His glory. Rather, God reveals His own glory in my salvation. He saved me, He drew me to Himself, He redeemed me, He is making me new. I really do nothing in this equation. God's glory is revealed by His own actions as He saves me and molds me after Himself. He does the work. When I follow His will, that isn't me revealing His glory - that is God revealing His glory through me.

I can do nothing. All God desires of me is that I love Him. Everything else flows from that. He does the work. He proves Himself through me - He proves His own glory through my life. Yes, in His ultimate love, God chose to not only save me but to reveal Himself to others through my life, not by what I do but by how He works in me.

I don't know if this makes sense. I feel like I have pressured myself to do so much to show God or prove Him or bring Him glory or be worthy of Him, when actually I have no other role but to love Him. And loving Him isn't a responsibility or a job - it is a joy, a natural thing, an uncontrollable response to His love for me. Yes, this does seem to get convoluted in my life, but when it all comes down to it, this is what I know to be true: I love my God. And that is more than enough. He delights in that love and wants nothing else from me.