For almost three years I have been working on a book on the glory of God. This began as a study to balance out a painful but eventually liberating work on the sin nature in the life of the believer, called Sin Less.
But as the study of God’s glory grew there was an expansion and solidification of some deeply held commitments in my heart that the church today has largely lost focus of the glory of God in what we do and in why we exist. As a pastor, much of what I did was to run programs and to manage the calendar and money. My call to lift high the majesty and glory of God was overwhelmed by the sea of inconsequential and wholly unnecessary activity.
The study on glory and a five year hiatus from daily pastoral responsibilities watered my thirsty soul and renewed my longing to engage in something far more significant than what I had been spending my life doing for more nearly 30 years.
The study of glory put in sharp focus why the church exists and what it ought to be about. Reading and contemplating glory simplified a view of ministry and it created limits to what ought to be central in the life of local worshipping church and what should be left undone.
This is not intended to criticize others nor is this wanting to impugn their motives or sincerity. But the glory of God is so overshadowing that it rises to challenge anything of lesser importance and has become the driving passion for ministry and the compelling longing to see how it might be recovered as the non-negotiable essential of Church life. The recovery of glory in the church is all the more important in the day when marketing, not evangelism, entertainment not discipleship, and self-help not growth unto spiritual maturity are what draw the time and talent of God’s people away from God’s glory.
Glory is not just a composite of church life. It is the life of the church.
Glory is not just a subject. It is the subject of all we do. If an action, a worship service, a mission, a class is not about the glory of God in some important way, the church has lost its purpose.
The one thing that the church is equipped to do, shown how to do it, and given the example of The Lord Jesus Christ and taught by apostles to do well and extensively, is to glorify God. Yet in our day we scarcely know what that even means.
It is time to focus on glory.