QUESTION 3
How can you glorify God?
ANSWER
By loving him and doing what he commands.
In our last question, we learned that God created everything for his glory. You can be sure of this: if God made something, it was built to show how great and awesome he is! Mountains show off God’s glory by being impressively enormous. Flowers show off God’s glory by being impressively beautiful. Even sloths show off God’s glory by looking impressively goofy and moving impressively slow! Everything in creation glorifies our great and awesome God by doing what God designed it to do. That includes human beings like you and me!
But unlike mountains, flowers, and sloths, God made us “in his image” (Gen. 1:27). That means God made human beings to be like him in ways that set us apart from everything else he created. He gave us souls that could think and feel. He gave us minds that could learn and create. He gave us the ability to speak and listen and experiment and ask questions and love and explore! As cute as a sloth is, it can’t do any of those things!
Because we are made in God’s image, human beings can glorify God in ways nothing else can. For starters, we glorify God when we love him. Psalm 73:25 says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.” By loving and desiring God more than anything else in the world, we make him look great and glorious. Our actions are saying, “Nothing in this great big universe is even close to how great God is! I’d choose him over anything else!”
Humans also bring glory to God by obeying him as our king. While mountains, flowers, and sloths are pretty great, the first two items in that list don’t have brains, so it’s impossible for them to understand God’s commands. And sloths? Let’s just say they aren’t the smartest creatures on the planet! But human beings, made in God’s image, have brains that can understand God’s commands. We have souls that can choose to love him and love each other. And we have hearts that can know the difference between right and wrong.
When we choose to obey the commands of our Creator, we show the world that he is a great King worthy of being obeyed. In fact, when we obey God’s commands, it can cause other people to want to bring him glory, too. Matthew 5:16 says, “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
Every moment of our lives is a chance to bring glory to God. There’s no activity so small and unimportant that you can’t use it to show off the glory and majesty of your great God. 1 Corinthians 10:31 challenges us, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” So as you sit down to dig into your supper on Taco Tuesday, understand that you can crunch that taco to the glory of God!
QUESTIONS TO TALK ABOUT
+ How could you live your life in a way that would cause other people to give glory to God?
+ Things give glory to God by doing what they were designed to do. Based on how God designed humans, what are some unique ways we can give glory to God?
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
Ecc. 12:13; Mark 12:29-31; John 15:8-10; 1 Cor. 10:31
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