NCC Q6: Glorify God...like a restaurant?

New City Catechism Question 6

http://www.newcitycatechism.com/

Q: How can we glorify God?

A: We glorify God by enjoying him, loving him, trusting him, and by obeying his will, commands, and law.

Deuteronomy 11:1

“You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.”

The catechism answer and passage from Deuteronomy is pretty straightforward. We glorify God by enjoying him, loving him, trusting him, and most importantly by obeying him. If we want to glorify God we shouldn’t just listen to him, we should obey him. Or as it says in James 1:22: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” Obedience is a critical way we can glorify God on a daily basis. Often the first step towards a life that glorifies God is simple obedience. If God says something in the bible, then do it.

But glorifying God can still be difficult, even if we are obeying, and I think it is because our hearts and minds are not in it. Now often the heart and mind can follow an action, so obeying God even if we are not “feeling it” can lead to our hearts and minds coming around and falling in step with our acts of obedience.

But glorifying God may require us to also reassess what else in our lives we glorify over and above God. As Joshua Harris points out in the catechism material, the problem isn’t that we don’t know how to glorify God. Harris makes this excellent point: “The fact is that we all know how to glorify something or someone…because we do it all the time.” He goes on to show how we talk passionately and endlessly to others about our favorite restaurant, new phone, and significant other. I recently found this to be true in my own life when my wife and I had a friend from out of town stay with us for a few days. She and another friend were planning on going to a local restaurant that I had been to and really enjoyed, and so I eagerly showed her the menu online (the pictures on the online menu alone were mouthwatering!), told her about my favorite item on the menu, and told her what was unique about that restaurant. I glorified that restaurant without even trying. And we all do that on a regular basis. So we already glorify people and things in our lives, and often we devote more energy to glorifying those things instead of to glorifying God.

So then the question becomes, do we feel and talk the same way about God? And if not, why not? Why is it so easy for us to talk on and on about our favorite smart phone and yet not talk that way about God? It may be that we have too many other things in our lives that we already put so much energy into glorifying (restaurants, phones, careers, spouses, kids, cars, sports…the list could go on and on!), and we need to redirect that energy away from those things and focus it on glorifying God. But it may also be that we need to spend more personal time reflecting on who God is, how great he is, and the wonderful things that God has done for us. God has saved us from our sin through sending Jesus to die for us, and he also continues to provide for us on a daily basis. And the more we remember who God is and what God has done for us, the more we will glorify God, through our obedience to him and by proclaiming him to others.