ALL GLORY BELONGS TO GOD

"Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness" (Psalm 29:2).

M. R. Gordon in The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible defines glory as, "Difficult, weight, heaviness, worthiness, reputation, or honor." God's glory is the result of His nature and acts. He is glorious in His character; for there is a store of everything that is holy, good, and lovely in God, and in that He must be glorious. The actions which come out of God's character are also glorious. When you give the glory that is due God to any of His creatures, you are attempting to De-glorify God. Nevertheless, God will not share His glory with any man or woman, or anything for that matter. There is nothing in man/woman of which he/she ought to glorify self. Who made you to differ from other people that you tend to glorify yourself? What do you have that you did not receive from the gracious hand of a loving God? Therefore, you are to walk carefully and demonstrate an attitude of humility before the LORD on daily basis.

Those who are students of the Bible know what happened to Nebuchadnezzar when he usurped the glory of God. He was literally driven into the forest and became like one of the beasts until he came back to his senses. We also read of the demise of Herod Agrippa I when he basked in the glory due God and began to persecute the early Christians (Acts 12).

The moment you glorify yourself, you make yourself a rival of God. God is the Most High and besides Him there is no other. Shall the insect of an hour glorify itself against the sun which warmed it into life? Shall the creature glorify itself against the Creator? Shall the potsherd exalt itself above the man who fashioned it upon a wheel? That is why God sent Jeremiah to learn an object lesson from the potter on behalf of Israel. Shall the drops of the ocean struggle with the tempest? Give unto the LORD all you righteous. Yet it is one of the hardest thing in the Christian life to learn this sentence--"Not unto us, not unto us but unto Your name be glory." The reason is that human ego is hard to put to death.

Human nature is egotistical that sometimes it wants to take the center stage, but the center stage belongs to Jesus Christ. We live in world where men/women think that the universe revolves around them. The Nineteenth century Enlightenment philosophy that placed man as the epicenter of the universe is still with us. Secular Humanism and Post-Modernism are fancy and sophisticated terms for Enlightenment, which have failed to establish the utopia the secular man has anticipated. However, when a catastrophe occurs, we wake up to the realization that humans are not the center of the universe after all. God is teaching us that "Glory belongs to Him and Him alone." It is a lesson we must learn on daily basis, but when we become defiant, the LORD uses a painful discipline to help us realize that glory and worship belong to Him exclusively, because He is holy and righteous. Give God the glory everyday of your life. Whenever He does something special and supernatural in and through you rejoice but give the glory to the LORD. Direct all glory to the LORD and you would experience His blessings upon your life. Worship and glorify the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

Originating at www.christianitycurrentaffairs.blogspot.com