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What is our purpose? As humans, what were we created for? What is our calling? These are questions we normally pose to ourselves. As image bearers of God, it is not only crucial that we ask these questions but that we seek to answer to it. Why did God make me and to what end? The Westminster divines, based on the truth stated in Holy Writ, answer this most crucial question, what is the chief end of man by saying, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” (WSC Q. 1). We were created to glorify the triune God and this is what we should seek to do. That is our mission statement as humans. It follows then that we ask ourselves, How? How do we glorify God?

We must seek to fulfill our purpose of being created each day of our lives and we must reflect on these truths even more so now that the times are dark. Our eternity depends on it. We are fifteen days into the New Year and it will be best for our souls, if we dwelt on how we can achieve our purpose. The question we must face is this, “How can we glorify God”. We can glorify God in so many ways. So how does one summarize it? How do you teach someone how they should glorify God? That is not something we teach! God does that! He does everything! He regenerates our heart so that we can! It would be easier to just give everyone a to-do list and tell them to just follow this, for with this you can glorify God. But is God really glorified by following a to-do list? We have people from different races and different backgrounds and all walks of life. How do you answer this for everyone? The question, “how can we glorify God” is broad. It could have been easier had it said, “how can we glorify God in our workplace, or our body, or even at school”. But we ask, that the most Gracious and Holy God, will show us grace as we seek to glorify Him.

What Does Glorifying God Mean?

Glorifying God means we recognize that He is far greater, valuable and beautiful than any other thing. It means that He is our treasure. So to glorify God, we are in essence treasure hunters seeking out our greatest treasure. We must first recognize who God is to glorify Him. Glorifying God means we must worship God as He is and must cherish Him above all things. With this, How then, can we glorify God?

Knowing God And Christ

The most important way we can glorify God is to know Him. I do not mean knowing about Him but knowing Him. We glorify God by having a Father-Son relationship with Him; that is by knowing Him. As image bearers of God, we were all made for a relationship with God; in fact we are all in a relationship with Him. We either relate with God as a Father, who sent His Son for sinners and who welcomes us to a loving relationship with Him, or we relate with God as the Judge and Creator of all things.

In the first type of relationship, we are Sons, in the second, we are enemies of God. In both categories, we know about God (creation speaks of God (Romans 1:19-20)). As a result of the Fall, we are all born dead in our sins and find ourselves in the latter category; our natural relationship with God is not as a Father-Son relationship, but as enemies of God. As enemies of God, we hate God and do not honor Him as God. Paul says in Romans 1:19, “ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” We actually spit in the face of Him who gives us breath. We look in the face of God and disobey Him. How dare we! We don’t glorify God; in fact we can’t. However, because of Christ’s death on the cross, we are reconciled to God. We enter into a Father-Son relationship with the triune God by placing our faith in Christ. We down our weapons, stop warring against God in sinful rebellion and we cry out to Him. No longer are we children of wrath, but we are sons. We can now live our purpose: Glorifying God! It is important to understand how we can know God. It is only through Christ.

Knowledge of the Father comes only through the Son. Apart from the Son, we cannot know God. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature (Hebrews 1:3) and He makes God known (John 1:17). He is the way, the truth and the life and no one goes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6).

You can glorify God this year by knowing Him. In fact, that is what eternal life is! In his high priestly prayer, Jesus said this, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent “This is how we can glorify God: By knowing Him and His Son. God is so vastly greater than us that we cannot know Him fully, even into eternity. Knowing God is far much precious than gold or silver! Like Paul, we must count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. He is All! Knowing God doesn’t end with believing in Christ at just one point. It is a way of life. We will find ourselves exactly where we started when it comes to Knowing God. He inexhaustible! Incomprehensible!

Do you know God and do you know Christ? John Piper is famous for saying this, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him”. We will only be satisfied in God when we know Him. Isaiah says in Isaiah 40:17, “All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.” Do you know this God? Do you cherish Him above all?

Obeying God’s Word

In His high priestly prayer, Christ says, “I glorified you on earth,…” How did Christ glorify His Father on earth? He tells us, by saying, “having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). As the perfect man, Christ is the embodiment of a life that glorifies God. He lived in perfect obedience to the Father. It comes as no surprise that the Father is well pleased in Him (Matt. 3:17). To glorify God, like Christ, we must obey His Word. Dr. Steven Lawson notes this when he says, “The primary purpose of the Word of God is to glorify the God of the Word”. Unlike our first parents who disobeyed God in the garden, Christ lived in perfect obedience to His Father. Now, because of the person of Christ, his death and resurrection, we have the person of the Holy Spirit, who helps us to live in accordance with God and His Word. It is incredible to think that we need God to help us glorify God! O What wretched men we are! We can glorify God by obeying His Word, and trusting in His promises. To obey God’s Word, we must believe that He is who He says He is and that we can trust His Word. Because God is good, we must obey Him. God is glorified and honored, when we like Christ, do what He tells us to do. What does God tell us? He tells us to believe in Christ. He tells us to be in the world but not of it. He tells us to be a light in a dark world. He tells us to be holy, as He is holy. God is glorified if we are obeying God’s word in these and other places. Are you obeying God’s Word? Are we holy as He is holy?

Praying to God

You might be asking yourself, “How is God glorified when I pray to Him?” I will show you. God is glorified when we believe in the gospel. By believing in the gospel, we honor Him as Lord and Savior, and humbly accept that He is infinitely greater than all. Prayer is essentially living out the gospel. In his book, A Praying Life, Paul E Miller, makes this point when he says,

Prayer mirrors the gospel. In the gospel, the Father takes us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of salvation. In prayer, the Father receives us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of help.

Like the gospel, when we pray, we realize that we are nothing apart from Christ. In the gospel, we realize that we are wretched and sinful, and that we need the righteousness of the perfect Lamb of God to be right with God. When we pray, we acknowledge also, that we are nothing apart from Christ, and that we need Him to perfect our words. Does it not strike us that Christ tells us to pray to the Father in His name? Apart from Christ, we can do nothing ! Prayer is a recognition of this: God is most glorified, when we acknowledge our helplessness and His all-sufficiency!

When we realize we can do nothing on our own, we are helpless and God is everything to us. He is glorified when we pray. We must be a people of prayer. We must cast ourselves at the foot of the throne via the cross of Calvary and cry out, “We are nothing! We need you”. In Prayer, we come as broken and helpless, and all we can do is cling unto the promises of God. In what other way can God be more glorified than when we His people trust Him? In Prayer, we are confronted with who God is and we can only bow to Him. Prayer glorifies God and so we must pray.

When we know God and His Son, obey His Word and also trust in His promises, and when we pray to God, He is glorified in us. This is the root. And this applies to all from different races or walks of life or work force. We must be a people who know their God, obey Him and cry out to Him. And in doing so, we glorify God. We must always remember, this is our chief end. Grace and Peace to all who seek to glorify their God, who died to save them from their sins.

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, (Ephesians 1:3)

The text above is the first of twelve verses – one long, elegant sentence in the Greek – within which Paul the apostle praises God for blessing the Ephesian church with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. In the verses that follow, from the 15th verse onward, Paul prays for the Ephesians that their spiritual eyes will be opened to fully come to terms with the import of these blessings.

Before I proceed further, let me answer a question on my mind which I believe will be of immense benefit to the discourse. When we know what praise is, in our relationship with God, then we can best appreciate Paul’s words in the text. An online Christian ministry, gotquestions, says this of praise:

[It] is the joyful recounting of all God has done for us … It is … the truthful [sincere and heartfelt] acknowledgment of the righteous acts of another. Since God has done many wonderful deeds, He is worthy of praise (Psalm 18:3).

With this brief description of what praise is, we can now look at Paul’s praises and glean at least four lessons with regards to Christian praise, prayer and doctrine.

The Place of Praise in the Christian’s Life

How important is praise in your Christian life? What position does it occupy on your prayer list? Is it something that comes at the tail end, when you have finished pouring out your petitions to God?
It is very instructive that before Paul made any petitions for the Ephesians, he started with praise. To Paul, prayer must begin with praise. A careful study of his epistles will reveal that this is his method everywhere. True Christian prayer must begin with praise. Similarly, the Psalmist said to enter His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise (Psalm 100:4). Indeed, it has been said that praise is the highest form of prayer.

The Nature of Christian Praise

A striking observation from Paul’s doxology here is his deliberate mention of the Trinity. He praises God the Father, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. “Spiritual blessings” means, not only are the blessings in view of a non-material nature, they are derived or applied to us through the Holy Spirit.

We see from Paul’s doxology, that true Christian praise, like the entire Christian position, is essentially Trinitarian. We direct our praises to God, through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. This brings me to my next point,

The Object of Christian Praise

First, notice that God is the object of our praise and worship. We are not the object.

Now, one may wonder that is it possible for anyone to make us the object of Christian praise? My answer is, sadly, very much so, as is apparent from my experience below.

In an assembly where my family and I used to worship – I used to be in the choir – each time before praises, the pastor will tell the congregation, “focus on your problems.” “Focus on what you want God to do for you during this time of praises.” Then we are told, “the harder you praise, the more you will be blessed.” Sounds familiar?

It is not enough that we tend to barge into God’s presence as it were, roll down a long list of requests – some of us even give Him ultimatum when He must answer us or else…, and perhaps when we are about to finish we thank Him, sometimes we even forget to thank Him — but even His praise we have hijacked! “Focus on our problems during times of singing praises to God”?

When my wife and I stood back to reflect on our worship services in that church, we realised that it was all about us, not about God. The sermons were always about us – how if we did A and B, God will bless us materially. We could not see the Gospel at the centre of the weekly sermons. Even the themes of the services were all materialistic. If it wasn’t about breaking financial curses, it was about anointing for promotion or about one material thing or the other.

Now in a sense, I believe the church today prays and praises the way we do because we don’t stop to consider who is the object of our praise.

Paul’s approach is so unlike ours these days. Observe his method: he doesn’t start with us, he starts with God and His blessedness!

Later on, Paul will praise God for the fact that He has blessed us. But that is not what he puts in the first place. His first focus is on the blessedness of the One who alone is the object of our praise. True Christian praise is God-centred, not man-centred.

When we gather in praise and corporate worship to God, we ought to approach with reverence, bearing in mind his attributes. We come before him with reverence and awe, not to entertain ourselves.

A.W. Tozer put it so aptly when he said, “Gathering together for worship has nothing to do with pleasing ourselves, but it has everything to do with pleasing God.”

The Motivation for Christian Praise

Paul goes on to praise God because He has blessed us – not with some, but all spiritual blessings! The Puritan theologian, Paul Bayne (1537-1617), paraphrased our opening verse thus:

“Praised be the God of our Saviour, praised be the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us; that is, by his blessing made us partakers of all spiritual blessings, such as take their beginning from heaven, are kept in heaven, shall all have their accomplishments in heaven; and all this in Christ, who is the root and the second Adam, whence every benefit supernatural springeth, and is derived unto us.”

Strangely, there are some who interpret every mention of “blessings” in the Bible in terms of material things only. But does Paul have material blessings in view here? The qualification “spiritual” will immediately debunk that. Further, the context shows that Paul has in mind the great plan of salvation — beginning in eternity past with the election of the saints in Christ, till eternity to come when God will once more head up all things under Christ. We see from the context that Paul had in mind the eternal counsel that took place between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; where each person of the blessed Trinity covenanted to do certain things in the grand plan of salvation. The Father thought up the plan of Salvation (Eph. 1:3-6). The Son took it upon Himself to carry out this plan, to take on human flesh and be born as a babe, suffer and die a shameful death on a tree (Eph. 1:7-12). The Father on His part promised to grant forgiveness to all those who would believe inthe Son and the work He did on the cross; and adopt them into His family (Eph. 1: 3-6). The Spirit on His part partook to apply the work of salvation to the believer (Eph. 1:13-14).

In a sense, our praise and worship today is superficial because we have stopped contemplating the great work of God in the salvation of man. The contemporary Christian only praises when he has material blessings in view. This is a far cry from apostolic praise.

To the Christian, houses, cars, money and property are not the choicest of blessings. These are temporary. The Christian’s joy and praise is not predicated on material blessings only. His blessings are first of all spiritual – they are other-worldly!

The Christian rejoices that his name is written in heaven. We rejoice because we are forgiven, absolved from sin, accepted in the Beloved, and heirs of heaven!

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As a sequel, this is the third and final in a three part series; Psalm 25: Praying A Psalm. Previously, we looked at Prayer For Guidance  and Prayer For Protection. Today’s title is Prayer For Forgiveness of Sin.

Remember your mercy, O LORD, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O LORD”(v.6) “For your name’s sake, O LORD, pardon my guilt, for it is great.” (v11). “Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.” (v18).

As you ponder over life, what do you consider your greatest need? If God did ask you to make one request, what would that be? According to the bible our greatest need is not food or clothes, neither is it shelter. Our greatest need is deliverance from our greatest predicament, which is the wrath of God. The bible tells us in Romans 3:23; “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God“. We have all rebelled against a holy God, we have each gone astray and told God to get out of our lives. We have lied, we have cheated, we have stolen, we have murdered with our hearts. We have committed adultery in our hearts, we have coveted our neighbour’s property. Every sin, you name it we have committed it. And you know what that means? The answer is found further on in the same book of Romans 6:23, reads “For the wages of sin is death….” David understood this well. He knew the predicament of every human soul. In Psalm 130:3, he writes; “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?”

Our sin is so great that we need a great Saviour. No amount of good deeds can atone for our sins. Unless the LORD shows mercy we are lost and lost forever. Augustus Toplady captured this so well in the hymn, Rock of Ages, in the 2nd and 3rd stanzas he writes:

All the labours of my hands
Could not meet Thy law’s demands
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow
All for sin could not atone,
Thou must save, and Thou alone
Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling
Naked come to Thee for dress,
Helpless, look to Thee for grace
To Thy fountain, Lord I fly,
Wash me Saviour or I die.

Christ is the only perfect sacrifice for our sin. He left all His glories and splendour and came into our world to identify with us. He lived the perfect life that we could not live, and died the death we deserved. He was crucified on a heinous cross but on the third day he was raised from the dead, which was a seal of the Father’s approval. The verdict was that anyone who will repent from sin and put their faith in Christ, will be credited with the perfect life of Christ. “…the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God…” This is the only hope to find forgiveness with a holy God. We see across the entire bible that, our hope of forgiveness is not found in some good deed we have done. David understood this as he repeatedly appeals not to his own goodness or righteousness, but to the goodness and mercy of God.

This should be a great encouragement to all of us. God knows exactly where you are, right now at this moment, he sees all the dirt and mess you’re in right now. Today may be the day of your salvation, do not harden your heart because this offer is not open ended. In the book of Acts 17:31, Peter said “…he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

On that day it will be too late. On that day Jesus will not be a Saviour, he will be a judge. I plead with you not to wait till that day but turn from your sin today and trust in Jesus for the salvation of your soul.

Sin is destructive. It goes against everything God wanted for us, joy, peace, love and fellowship. So when we conceal it, it saps away our joy and peace. In verse 16-18, David recounts his afflictions and troubles and pleads for forgiveness. He prays “Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.  The troubles of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses. Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.”  There is no joy in concealing  sin. We must be constantly confessing and forsaking our sins. When we harbor sin, our fellowship with God is broken and the joy of the Lord is taken away. (Psalm 32:3-4).

These are the three requests David makes of God. What weaves them together is the desperation expressed in all of them. In this Psalm we see a great God and a great sinner. Our need is so great that only a great God could meet it. Our enemies are many and relentless; our need for guidance is more acute than ever before in a world of competing voices and our need for forgiveness is so essential that without it we are doom to perish forever. As you examine your prayers over the last few months, what do they say about you? Do they reveal a person who is passionate about pleasing the Lord and advancing his Kingdom purposes or it just about you and your self-serving wants?

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