Created for God's Glory

Some of you know me pretty well already, others of you are going to get to know me a bit more throughout the year. However, none of you would have recognized me when I was in Middle School and my Freshman year of High School. Not that I looked that different, but my personality was very different. I was almost a different person. I was really quiet and shy and was afraid of embarrassing myself. I wasn’t a leader at all, but was more of a follower—kind of doing what everyone else was doing. I was really awkward. It was a rough few years of my life. 

Really, every season of your life is going to have some great benefits and some great struggles—some rough patches. In the Middle School and High School years, part of the struggle is trying to figure out who you are. You hit puberty, things start changing, and you start trying to figure out what type of person you’re going to become. That’s why things begin to get awkward—because everyone is trying to figure it out. And it takes a while to figure some of this out and it takes a decent amount of trial and error. You’re going to see some of your classmates who try to figure this out by just trying to fit in with everyone around them—others are going to try to figure this out by working hard NOT to fit in with those around them. Some are going to try to figure this out by playing a bunch of different types of sports. Some are going to try to do it through working hard on their school work.

It might change on a regular basis. I still remember the day when one of my best friends showed up at school very different. When we first met, he was working really hard to fit in with the sports people—he played basketball and dressed like basketball players. He was really good at golf, so he dressed like a golfer. Then, all of a sudden, one day he showed up wearing cowboy boots and wrangler jeans and an Ariat shirt. I never actually said anything to him about it. I didn’t make fun of him. We just kept hanging out and doing stuff together. He ended up starting his own business shoeing horses and was a team roper on the weekends for a while. 

Some of that is all fine and dandy. In many ways, it doesn’t really matter if you’re a sports person, a cowboy, or an artistic person. However, it’s not fine when those things begin to become too important for you. When these things begin to define who you are and what you do. When these things become the be-all-and-end-all of your life. When that begins to happen, you’ve built your life on the sand that is going to crumble the moment a storm comes because ALL of those things are temporary things that could be taken away in a moment's time. 

Let me give you one lighter example, then a much heavier example. I’ve known plenty of people over the years who have built their life around the idea of being an athlete. That’s who they ended up deciding who they are. Well, guess what? That can easily be taken away from you in the blink of an eye and you have no control over that. The other team can come in and cheap shot you and end your high school career. What will you do then, when everything you’ve built your life on is taken away from you?

I had to wrestle through this coming out of my hospitalization a few years ago. When I came out of the coma, I couldn’t talk. My vocal cords were paralyzed. And talking is what I do for a living—it’s the calling God gave me. If I had built my life around that identity—being a pastor or a speaker—it would have shattered me. Thankfully, God had worked in me over the years to make sure that wasn’t the case. Also, thankfully, God also decided that he just wanted to keep my quiet for a month or so then give me my speech back. 

If you’re going to build your life on something, it has to be built on something much more firm—something that cannot be taken away from you in a moment. That’s what this year’s theme is all about. We read this in Isaiah 43:7, “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” (Isaiah 43:7, ESV). This is a reminder that God has created us and designed us for a purpose. That purpose is to glorify Him. 

I’ve been talking about this with the Seniors a bit the last couple weeks. When we understand that God is the one who created us, we also begin to understand that God is the one who gets to tell us our meaning and purpose in life. We’re not actually the ones who get to decide that. When a potter decides to make a cup, and not a plate, the cup doesn’t get to decide that it wants to be a plate. The Creator decides our meaning and purpose. For us, our Creator has told us that he designed us and created us to bring glory and honor to Him. 

This is a firm place for us to build our life upon. Here’s why. It’s no longer about the specific things we do, but about a bigger purpose behind the things we do. So, if you’re working hard to glorify God through your athletic abilities and you get injured, life is not over. You just simply move on to the next way you will bring glory and honor to God in your new situation. When I was wrestling with the idea that I may never speak again, I remember clearly thinking, “Well, I guess God wants me to become a writer or has something else planned where I can glorify Him without being able to speak.” This is why we must build our life on the reality that we are created to bring glory and honor to God. It allows us to find purpose and meaning in whatever situation we find ourselves—even in very difficult situations. 

This is what we’re going to be focusing on throughout the year this year. We’re going to be looking at it from a variety of angles. We’re going to be looking at a bunch of different verses that point to this reality and help us understand what it looks like to glorify God at school, in our friendships, at work, in the play, on the field, in the way we talk, even in the way we eat our food. How do we live this life God has created us to live—a life that was created to glorify God in everything we do, whether big or small?

I want you to take some time this next week—or in Connections Groups on Wednesday—to think about two things: 1) What am I building my life on right now? What would devastate me if it disappeared? And 2) Stop a couple times throughout the next week and ask yourself, “How can I glorify God in this?”