Whose Glory?
I am learning what it means to run a blog/ministry/business for God’s glory and I’m finding it to be really tricky.
I’ve recently experienced some frustration and confusion with my blog and it’s purpose. I’ve been checking my numbers and stats and finding myself far from where I hoped to be. I’ve struggled with engaging people on social media and “platforming” to grow my audience. I’ve found myself with questions about how much promotion is necessary and God-honoring.
And then it seemed as though my creative well had run dry. I couldn’t think of what to write. At one time ideas for posts flowed easily and naturally. Now it seemed that my inspiration had run out.
So I came to my husband one evening and asked for his advice. How could I make blogging more of a formal occupation? How could I get more likes on social media? How could I convince people to read my posts? How could I come up with more inspired ideas?
Praise God that he blessed my husband with wisdom on how to speak kindly and lovingly to me! After listening patiently to all my complaints, he asked me this question:
“Whose glory are you doing this for?”
After some initial frustration and claiming that he “just didn’t get it”, I had to answer honestly:
“My own.”
My husband pointed out that I had reached the point I had with my little hobby-blog because I had become inward-focused. I was comparing myself to other bloggers and authors and aspiring to achieve their levels of fame and popularity. You can see the self-centeredness in the questions I was asking my husband above.
I was making my creative passion all about my fulfillment, my likes, my popularity, my fame.
Praise God that he chose to dry up my creative well! This was not the frame of mind in which I had originally intended to start writing.
So after some repentance, prayer, and reminders from God’s Word about my purpose in this endeavor, I was able to see things from a renewed perspective.
This is about His Glory, not mine.
Fighting the Desire for Self-Glory
I doubt very much that I’m alone in this struggle to desire God’s glory and not my own.
God has graciously given us different gifts and talents to complete the work he has prepared for us to do.
And oh how easy it is, to desire fame and glory for those talents!
Whether you’re an author, or a teacher, or a mechanic, or a stay-at-home mom, we all long for praise for using our gifts well.
We know we should long for God’s glory for our good work and not our own. We know that we are only capable of doing the things we do because God is gracious to us. And we even desire to do our work for His glory.
But there in the background of all our creative striving is that sin behind every sin. That age-old sin as old as the garden of Eden.
We want to be God. And we want his rightful glory for ourselves.
We will battle to do God’s Work for God’s glory and not our own for the rest of our lives. This will be a constant fight.
We will need to repent and refocus again and again until we reach the other side of eternity.
But there are things we can do to refocus our attention and our striving and remind ourselves of the reason why we do the work we do.
Here are several ways, I help turn my inward thinking, outward to the God who deserves all glory, honor and praise.
1. I preach the Gospel to Myself
There is never a moment in my day that I don’t need to remember the good news about what Jesus has done for me on the cross. When I think about how I need to go about my work each day, I think about this verse from the gospel of Luke:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27)
This is the mindset I need to go about my work each day. And it is also absolutely impossible for me to do on my own. But when I think about the cross, and preach the gospel to myself, I’m reminded that Jesus Christ perfectly met this standard on my behalf. Not only that, but he paid the penalty I deserved for not meeting it. So now I can come to him for forgiveness and ask him to transform my heart so that day-by-day I can better meet this standard and give him the glory he deserves. When I get self-focused and discouraged about the work I’m doing, I remember this and am filled with great hope.
2. I Praise Him in the Process
I am learning to praise God for the process he brings me through for my work and not just the outcome. I am learning to thank him for each step of the process. I actively try to stop and thank him for each good idea he brings to my mind and remind myself that it was His idea in the first place. I repent when I find myself idolizing my success and ask him to give me a teachable spirit when I experience failure. I think back to those first four words of the entire Bible
“In the beginning God” (Genesis 1:1)
and remember that only God is a true creator. Anything I create is made using resources that He himself created and are never original to me. My feeble creativity is a mere reflection of his infinite creativity. I ask God to actively remind me of these things as I go about my work.
3. I perform frequent heart checks
I’m learning to ask myself several questions as I go about my creative work. What outcome am I hoping for from this work? How am I going to feel if the outcome is different from what I’m hoping for? Where am I finding my identity in this moment? If no one ever sees or responds to my work, will I still find it worth doing? Whose glory am I doing this for? Am I doing this out of obedience to God or for man’s approval?
These are questions I have to ask myself over and over again throughout each step of the process.
4. I abide in God’s Word
There are several verses that I refer back to when I forget the purpose for my work (specifically blogging). The first one is this:
I will tell of the kindnesses of the Lord, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according to all the Lord has done for us. Isaiah 63:7 (NIV)
The second one is this:
Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul.- Psalms 66:16
I repeat these verses to myself to remember that my purpose in writing is tell others about God’s kindnesses and what he has done for my soul. This helps me resist the temptation to write for my own glory or to use my writing as a platform to simply express my opinion.
This is the beauty of God’s Word. It points us to the Giver of all grace and reminds us of who we are in relation to Him. When I find myself becoming distracted and too self-focused, I open my Bible and remind myself of who it is that I am serving.
When we make a habit of abiding in God’s Word, we are better able to take off the lens that makes us look inwardly and put on a Biblical perspective that helps us see our work as a means to glorify our Creator. The Bible helps us see rightly.
It’s normal for us to want a reward for our hard work. I believe that is a God-given desire. What we need to remember is that our reward will come from God, not man. And we may not receive it in this lifetime.
God created us to do work and He daily enables us to do our work well. Because of this truth, he alone deserves all the glory, honor, and praise for every little thing we accomplish. Let’s continue to do the work he has prepared for us to do with this truth in our minds.