The word that is used for glory in the New Testament is doxa. It comes into English in doxology, a word of glory, or a word of praise. Doxa comes from the verb meaning “to think.”

A person may be good, even noble, but if you don’t learn about that person, and think about their choices, their moral character, and their impact on people, that wonderful person may never have made any impression on you. Unless you learned about them and thought about their actions, their character, and words, they would have no impact on you whatsoever.

It’d be like you’d never heard of Mother Theresa. Her service to the poor and her wise and courageous words to the most powerful people in the world (regarding the evil of abortion), were astounding. The impact of her life on thousands of poor lepers and indigent poor in Calcutta is so filled with love and compassion that it shook the world. But if you’d never heard of her life and never contemplated the impact of her life she’d have no impact on you. It would be as if she didn’t even live, as far as you are concerned.

God isn’t glorious just when you think about him. He is glorious if you’d never been born. But it is through thinking about God, and this thinking is necessary and it is important, that the glory of God has its impact in your life and on you as a person.

When you hear about the love of God, you must take some time to think about the importance of that aspect of God and how it should impact and direct your life. If you learn about the mercy of God — how he forgives sinners and loves people in spite of what they’ve done — it would be crucial for you, in the light of this information about mercy, to take the fact of your sin and to align that fact against the incredible promises regarding the mercy of God toward sinners. At that point, the mercy of God becomes more than an interesting fact, it becomes a principle within your heart, your mind, and it impacts the way you live. But it becomes important, a point of glory in your life, when you think about it.

Glory comes as we “contemplate” God. God’s Person and his moral perfections and actions all occurred apart from our physical observation (in 99.999% of the cases), yet all of them can change our lives, inform our worship, and inspire our greater holiness when we think on them and understand who God is and what he has said and done. We need to study God.

Our culture labors to keep people from thinking about God. The culture wants us to be entertained, distracted, or exhausted by recreation or labor, every moment we are awake. If we are distracted, entertained, or exhausted, there is no room in our lives to think. Godly people of old would take time to contemplate, to think, on God. They would see thinking about God as one of their most important spiritual exercises. Today, we listen to everyone else but to God.

For a little exercise: Read Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (ESV).

Taking time to think on these virtues that are derived from God, will have a powerful impact on our lives, “and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9).

Taking time to think about God.

Think about God. Think about what God has done. Think about what God has said. Think about who God is in his moral nature and by his holy virtues.

This is how we see God as glorious. Apart from thinking, God is still absolutely glorious, but we miss his glory completely and we are spiritually impoverish.

Our thinking must not be unfettered and ill-focused. It is through the Word of God that our thoughts are directed to what can be known about God. Studying, reading, and contemplating the Word of God is the beginning, the middle, and the end of our learning about God in this life.

Think on these things.