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SCRIPTURE READINGS: GENESIS 28:10-19, ROMANS 8:12-25, MATTHEW 13:24-30, 36-43

SUNDAY REFLECTION

Strive for God’s glory is the theme for our reflection. To strive means to make great efforts to achieve or obtain something. The glory of God is the manifestation of the presence of God or experiencing the presence of God. To strive for God’s glory is to make a great effort to experience the presence of God in our lives. We shall reflect on the following facts about striving for God’s glory.

1. God reveals His glory to those who have a covenant relationship with Him.
2. We must strive for God’s glory by remaining faithful to Him.

Firstly, God reveals His glory to those He has a covenant relationship with. In Genesis 28:10-19, Jacob experienced the glory of God because God had established a covenant relationship with his Grandfather, his Father and now Jacob himself. “He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. ¹³ There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying” (Genesis 28:12-13). Similarly, we shall also continue to experience the Glory of God in our lives because we have become His children through our covenant relationship with Jesus Christ and through the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs —heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.” (Romans 8:14-17). Beloved in the Lord, we cannot strive for God’s glory if we do not have a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ. When we have a relationship with Jesus, the Holy Spirit dwells in us and we experience the glory of God in our lives. It was for this reason when the Jews stood against Stephen, we are told  “…full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:55-56). Again, in Matthew 17:1-8, because Peter, James and John had a relationship with Jesus, they experienced the transfiguration event which is the glory of God revealed through Jesus Christ. Dear friend, God is still revealing His glory to us through miraculous events in our lives. The glory God revealed to us on earth is called existential glory. We experience God’s glory when we survive accidents and life-threatening diseases or ailments. We experience God’s glory every day when we wake up and are counted among the living. We experience God’s glory in our lives when we are able to accomplish a lot with our feeble strength. God manifests His glory in our lives in diverse ways and at different times. Praise be to His Holy Name!

Secondly, the devil desires to prevent us from experiencing the glory of God therefore we must through faithfulness strive for God’s glory. In the parable of the weeds, Jesus said that “ “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear” (Matthew 13:40-43). Let us not be influenced by weeds or the son and daughters of the devil whose mission is to tempt us to sin and to do all manner of evil thereby missing the eternal glory of God that will be revealed to us at the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This glory of God is known as the eschatological glory, it is the glory Paul refers to when he wrote that “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Romans 8:16-17). Let us be obedient to His Word and remain faithful to Him so that on the judgement day we shall experience His full and eternal glory. James 1:22 admonishes us to “ … be doers of the word, and not hearers only…”  We sin when we disobey God and sin robs us of the glory of God, It is for this reason Paul wrote that “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We are admonished by one of our famous hymns to trust and obey if we desire His glory to be shed on our way. The first stanza of the hymn “Trust and Obey” reads,

When we walk with the Lord
in the light of his word,
what a glory he sheds on our way!
While we do his good will,
he abides with us still,
and with all who will trust and obey.

Refrain:
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

In summary, beloved the Lord, the theme for reflection is “Strive for God’s glory”. We discovered that God reveals His glory to those who have a covenant relationship with Him. Again, we must strive for God’s glory by remaining faithful to Him. May the Holy Spirit empower us to strive for God’s glory even as we prepare to share in the full and everlasting glory at the second coming of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.