Who Gets the Glory?

Do you ever feel like you are not doing enough for God? Do you feel like you want to do something more for Him? Do you ever feel like you want God to receive the glory, but YOU also want to receive praise, too? How do we find the balance between God getting glory and us feeling good about what we are doing? In our human finite understanding we have trouble with the feeling good about ourselves and God receiving glory. All of us want to be stroked, to be appreciated for what we do, but when it comes to serving in God's kingdom is that what should happen? I don't know. I guess Mother Teresa is one of the prime examples of servanthood, but she, too, received accolades. Did she want those accolades? No one knows for sure, but by all appearances she didn't seem to want any praise.

How many high-profile preachers have fallen because the attention they received "went to their heads?" It became about them and not about God. There is such a fine line between serving for God's glory and serving for our glory. Self-righteousness stems from the latter. Yet, I believe many in God's family deal with feelings of inferiority.

A few years back God had to "break" me. In that process God showed me that without Him I was nothing. He also showed me that I wasn't important because I was a musician, a teacher, a wife, a mother, but I was important simply because I was HIS CHILD. That seemed to put everything in perspective. We have to acknowledge God gave us our abilities and talents.

In his book Fresh Power, Jim Cymbala states, "He (the Holy Spirit) intends to do through us what only he can do. The issue is not our ability but rather our availability to the person of the Holy Spirit. In fact, this is God's ordained way of equipping us, because it leaves little doubt about who should get all the glory."

He states further, "If our human intellect and abilities and talents produced the results, we could strut around saying, 'My, we're pretty special, don't you think?' (By the way, that is the very attitude of too many churches that are run on the basis of programs and human talent rather than the manifest power of the Holy Spirit.)"

Cymbala talks in his book of the disciples, one of which denied Christ, two who fought about who would be first in the kingdom, one that doubted. He went on to explain that on the Day of Pentecost those ordinary men were empowered from on high and did something for which there was no human explanation. Paul stated in I Corinthians 2:4-5 "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power."

Bruce Wilkinson in his book You Were Born for This talks about someone wanting to be used by the Holy Spirit. The man asked his coworker if there was anything he could do for him. The man shared that his marriage was on the rocks and they were about to divorce. The Holy Spirit told the man who wanted to help that he needed to tell the coworker to make the bed. When he told his coworker, the man asked him how he knew. He said that making the bed had been a contention between he and his wife because he was always out of bed last and she'd ask him to make the bed and he never would. He went home and made the bed and that was the beginning of reconciliation. Would you ever counsel someone and tell them to "make the bed" out of the blue? I wouldn't either, but that is why the Holy Spirit is so necessary in our serving God and

doing things for God's kingdom. We need to be able to listen to the Holy Spirit and we would be doing and saying things that couldn't be explained in human terms. Then, there would be no room for anyone but God to get the glory for what we are doing for Him.

How many of you have ever heard a song or a sermon or watched something on Christian TV that was "just for you?" Those kind of situations occur when the Holy Spirit is either guiding the singer or preacher or you to turn into the program that God wants to use to speak to you.

I guess I just answered my own question! As long as I'm doing what I'm doing by walking in the Spirit and in the power of the Spirit then God will be the receiver of the glory. I can feel good about making sure that I am doing the Lord's bidding and not doing things "in the flesh." The results will be up to God, not me.

KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON

KAREN