Category Archives: definitions of glory

definitions of glory

The way we think about the church matters.

I think worship should be measured by God’s delight in what we offer him, not what we get from the experience. Our greatest benefit comes when we are filled with the fulness of God (Ephesians 3:19).

I think that Christians should be identified in every case by their purity in sexual matters, by the stunning beauty of their choices and decisions in the way they live their lives in the presence of God, and by their absolute rejection of any desire for worldly fame and success and or the mere accumulation of riches as a worthy goals for God’s people. Christians live different.

I think who we are before God is infinitely more important than what we do in God’s name.

I think the church is a glorious gathering of people whose lives are filled with God.

I think church ought to be much simpler and far grander.

I think about church being different from what it being I see in America.
I think when the church works properly, everyone benefits.

I think that many people hired as pastors, aren’t.

I think worship of God is incredible.

I think many people who think they are Christians, aren’t.

I think worship is only possible for people who believe and love God. Seekers should never be the focus of a worship service. Makes no sense.

I think being a biblical local church is difficult. And worth it.

I think that faithfulness is the only measure of success a church should be concerned about.

I think people are precious and that there is no reason to use people to make a church great.

I think love is more important to the church than a building is.

I think the work of the church is imitating God. Not being a business.

I think the church is different from the world.

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Some theses about the nature of the church and the glory of God.

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definitions of glory

Think about what you think about.

“Frequent thoughts discover root affections.”

Stephen Charnock, Works, Vol. 5, 461. A discourse on phronein, “to think.”

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

Romans 12:3

The frequency of your thought is a measure of what you value and how much you love. Want to measure the strength of your faith, ask, “How often do I think of God during the day?” Wonder how strong your love for your spouse (or good friend) is? Answer: “How often during the day do I think of her/him?” Want to know what it is that I value the most in my life? Answer: “What is it that I think about the most during the day?” That will tell you what is most important and what you love the most.

“Frequent thoughts discover root affections.” Your thoughts are not without consequence. It really matters what you think. No one does anything without thought. You think and then you act. What you think about makes you who you are and it determines everything you choose.

If you were asked, “What it is that you love?” You could answer, “This is what I think about the most. This is what I truly love: (and you’d fill in the answer here).”

What you frequently think about, mull over, contemplate, consider, puzzle about, those thoughts tell you what you value and what you love the most in your life. Your frequent thoughts reveal what is most important to you. Your frequent thoughts tell you what your heart loves. You can know how much you love God, people, and things by how frequently you think about them.

There could not be a simpler or more accurate measure of the health or disease of our spiritual life than to look at the frequency with which we think about God.

The world would tell you that you can think about anything and it will have no affect on you. But that is a lie. What you think about the most, is what you love the most. What you think about is what you want. What you think about most often is what you end up doing.

Your frequent thoughts reveal your “root affections.” What you think about reveals your deepest loves. By choosing to think about God and spiritual things (his love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and much more) and to think about the Person of God (his nature and perfections, his works and his redemption), you are, by thinking about God more and more, becoming a person who loves God the most.

No one can give glory to God who does not think of God. No one can live for God if they are not considering what God wants them to do. No one can obey God if they do not think first and frequently about God. Think more about the things of God.

“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.”

Philippians 4:8

Think about what you think about.

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definitions of glory

Desperate for Glory

Moses said, “Please, show me your glory.”

Exodus 33:18 

Exodus 33 is the account of God revealing himself to Moses on Mt. Horeb (Sinai). The Law has been given. Moses has seen the splendor of God, veiled, in hidden and shadow form. But after all that splendor and law-giving, now God affirmed his personal knowledge of Moses. God said to Moses, Exodus 33:17, “You have found favor in my eyes, and I know you by name.”

Then Moses replies with a plea, a desperate cry for God’s glory to be revealed to him. The Hebrew is:

“See to me [show me] I beg you [“na“] your glory.”

The word na is to beg, to plead, to crave, to entreat, to pray. Some English translations ignore this wonderful, powerful, important little word.

Moses’ desire for the glory of God is mirrored in Jesus’ High Priestly prayer in John 17:24 — 

“Father, I desire those you gave me to be with me where I am, so that they may behold my glory, that glory you gave me before the creation of the world.”

Jesus was desperate to show his glory to those he came to save. He pleaded with the Father that we might see the glory he had before the world was made.

Intimacy with God must lead us to that point, that place, the opening of a vista, to actually see his glory. We must plead, pray, be desperate in our plea,

“Please, I beg you with all my heart, show me your glory!”

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definitions of glory, Jesus Christ makes God's glory known, Philosophy of ministry.

Fighting false glory.

The glory of God is the grandest idea that the human mind can think about. It will be the only subject we will study in Heaven. The depth of glory as a subject is the depth of God himself. It can never be exhausted. It can never be totally grasped. It is more and more satisfying to our souls. It is a magnificent privilege to be invited into the world of God’s glory.

But men are at war with glory. This is a war not of bullets and bombs. This is a war of priorities and values. The glory of God boldly asks us: What do you love the most?

A love for God is different from all other loves. There is no greater love that can captivate our hearts. We may struggle to stay faithful through the trials and temptations of life, but the overwhelming desire of our heart will be to return to God, and to find our comfort, our meaning, our purpose, our holiness, and our hope in him alone.

The powerful work of sin tries to move us to love God and to love our sin at the same time. Churches and pastors who teach the prosperity gospel embarrass those who are faithful to the Gospel of holiness by teaching that you can be full of pride and self-promotion, you can be greedy for more and more money, and you can live any way you want, and God will love and forgive it all, as long as you ask Jesus into your heart. For them, Christ never becomes more precious than gold; Christ is never sought above fame; and Christ is never more important that personal success. False glory leads to a false faith. And you can be sure: false faith always disappoints.

The glorious church will not be self-promoting. It will not promise material wealth to those who become members. It will seek to nurture faith, not use people. It will focus on the value of the gospel and the cost of discipleship, not the esteem of the individual and cheap grace.

Sin takes every aspiration of men and it uses them as competitors for God’s glory. Sin convinces whole generations to change the meaning of key ideas and themes within the Gospel, and they redefine terms like “salvation,” “new birth,” “sanctification,” “justification,” and the rest. But then it gives rights of entry to the church to those who believe very little of the content of the true Gospel. Sin would want to believe in Jesus, but deny his sinlessness. Sin would believe in Christ, but deny that he rose from the dead. Sin would invite us to trust in Jesus, but hold that there are many ways to God, and that Christ is only one valid option.

Or it can be very subtle. Sin can take faithful people and plant in their hearts the desire to become famous. It can take a pastor and make him into a rancher (meaning that he just herds the people, but doesn’t care for them individually). It can take success and inflate the soul so that the people become proud of their accomplishments for God even when they verbally and publicly ascribe all their success to God. But secretly they think they did it all themselves.

Personally, sin can take modest spiritual growth and turn it into a desire to control others, or to become hungry for praise or position. It can turn reading the Bible into a dreaded and exhausting discipline, rather than it being the means of joy and worship for a lifetime.

False glory must be guarded against, fought hard with, and it must be defeated. Every church will struggle with false glory, no matter how wonderful the worship, how uplifting the messages, how incredible the music. It makes every church worse. It robs God of his rightful glory and it exalts man too much. It must be defeated.

Day by day, hour by hour, we must keep central in our minds that God alone is the center of all we do. That nothing we do, nothing we can plan or create, no program or activity, no advertisement or campaign, can create success. The only success is that the Lord will add daily to our number those who would be saved.

The glorious church must pursue the glory of God in everything we do. We must be careful that God is the sole and exclusive focus; he is the cause for every blessing; and he alone is our reward.

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