How Do I Glorify God in My Daily Life?

00:00:00.000 | Well, how do we glorify God in the little day-by-day things?

00:00:08.320 | The question comes up today.

00:00:09.720 | Pastor John, hello, my name is Trent.

00:00:11.480 | I've begun reading your book, Desiring God, and I understand now what you mean by Christian

00:00:16.960 | hedonism.

00:00:18.400 | How wonderful it is to know that God commands our supreme happiness and joy in Him.

00:00:24.000 | Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 31, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all

00:00:29.840 | to the glory of God."

00:00:32.400 | How can I give the Lord glory by enjoying Him through food?

00:00:37.040 | Is it by knowing that the food for that day was provided for me by Him and it's okay to

00:00:41.440 | enjoy it?

00:00:42.560 | Or another example would be happiness, when our children do well in school.

00:00:46.680 | I'm just wondering how to be happy in the Lord in the right way to bring Him the most

00:00:51.840 | glory.

00:00:53.040 | How do I do all things to glorify God?

00:00:57.600 | Christian hedonism.

00:00:58.600 | I brought up Christian hedonism.

00:00:59.920 | Say a word about that.

00:01:01.200 | Put everything in context here.

00:01:03.160 | Christian hedonism teaches that every person, all of us, should seek with all of our might

00:01:12.120 | to maximize the intensity and the duration of our enjoyment of God above all things,

00:01:22.440 | because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

00:01:29.200 | If you are most satisfied in family or job or fame or success or money or food or music

00:01:36.800 | or health or staying alive, if you are more satisfied in any of those than you are in

00:01:45.360 | God, then you diminish the glory of God and you magnify the glory of what you're most

00:01:52.840 | satisfied by.

00:01:54.920 | And the Bible makes clear that we should live in order to display the supreme worth and

00:02:00.400 | beauty and glory of God.

00:02:02.400 | That's our primary reason for existence.

00:02:06.040 | Now there are two main challenges that Satan uses to diminish the glorification of God

00:02:14.540 | in our lives by causing us to value something else more than we value God.

00:02:22.720 | And one of those is pain, and the other is pleasure.

00:02:26.520 | Those are Satan's two strategies for ruining the way we glorify God.

00:02:32.480 | Pain can cause us to value something else more than God by making us angry at God that

00:02:39.080 | we have this pain and making us want to be done with it more than we want to embrace

00:02:45.420 | God, which means that pain is a golden opportunity for us to glorify God by showing how much

00:02:54.320 | more we value Him than we value comfort or being free from this pain.

00:03:03.300 | Pleasure can also cause us to cherish something else more than God, not by making us angry

00:03:09.460 | at God, but by making us forget God because we're so satisfied in the pleasures that

00:03:16.060 | His gifts give us.

00:03:18.380 | We can see that in Ezekiel 16, 14, where God says to Israel, "And your renown went forth

00:03:25.420 | among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that

00:03:32.000 | I had bestowed upon you, declares the Lord, but you trusted in your beauty and played

00:03:41.700 | the whore."

00:03:42.700 | In other words, God gave Israel the great gift of beauty, and instead of leading them

00:03:50.100 | to glorify God for the gift, they fell in love with the gift.

00:03:55.300 | They preferred the gift over the giver; they dishonored God by not being satisfied in God

00:04:03.320 | but falling in love with God's good gift.

00:04:07.280 | So pain and pleasure are Satan's strategies that can ruin our glorification of God.

00:04:14.360 | Withholding good things can ruin us; giving us good things can ruin us.

00:04:21.700 | Youth can be an occasion for dishonoring God and not glorifying Him, or for indeed glorifying

00:04:32.040 | Him.

00:04:33.040 | And Trent's question has to do with this last point, namely, how do you glorify God

00:04:38.480 | in the good things that He gives us, like He mentions food and children?

00:04:44.880 | If he wants a book-length answer to that, then he should read Joe Rigney's book, Things

00:04:51.760 | of Earth.

00:04:53.460 | So I'm just going to point to a couple of passages which will give part of the answer,

00:05:00.080 | I think, to his question.

00:05:02.280 | Philippians 4, 11-13, Paul says, "I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.

00:05:09.520 | I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound.

00:05:14.040 | In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance

00:05:20.680 | and need.

00:05:21.680 | I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."

00:05:27.360 | So Paul makes clear that there is a spiritual secret, something deep and wonderful to be

00:05:33.720 | learned in the Christian life that enables a person not only to be brought low, but to

00:05:40.600 | abound, not only to hunger, but to have plenty, not only to be in need, but to have abundance.

00:05:47.880 | In other words, Paul is making it clear that abounding and having plenty and having abundance

00:05:55.880 | is as much of a challenge to the glory of God in our lives as is suffering.

00:06:02.880 | So Paul had to learn something peculiar and special and deep to help him know how to abound,

00:06:10.640 | and that's Trent's very question.

00:06:14.160 | And I think Paul's answer of what the secret is for abounding is in chapter 3, verse 7

00:06:23.560 | and 8.

00:06:24.880 | And the secret is not in discounting or diminishing the goodness of God's gifts, but in knowing

00:06:33.120 | Christ so well and loving Him so deeply and finding Him so satisfying that good things

00:06:42.960 | can be received from His hand as Christ-exalting gifts, and good things can be torn from our

00:06:51.120 | hands as Christ-exalting discipline.

00:06:55.640 | Here's what he says in chapter 3, verse 7.

00:06:58.240 | "Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ."

00:07:01.440 | In other words, Christ is way better.

00:07:03.720 | "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth."

00:07:09.240 | That's the point.

00:07:10.240 | "The surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

00:07:13.960 | For His sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order

00:07:18.600 | that I might gain Christ."

00:07:20.800 | The fact that good things are counted as loss or as rubbish does not mean they can't be

00:07:28.960 | enjoyed, but it does mean that the moment they compete with the superior beauty and

00:07:37.040 | worth and glory and satisfaction of Christ, they become an enemy.

00:07:42.840 | They become rubbish.

00:07:44.680 | But Paul has learned the secret that if Christ is more precious than anything, then both

00:07:51.800 | the loss and the presence, the gain of things, good things, is an occasion for treasuring

00:07:59.360 | Christ.

00:08:01.400 | And the other passage that I think points to the answer is 1 Timothy 4, 4 and 5, where

00:08:07.720 | Paul says, "Some forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to

00:08:15.560 | be received with thanksgiving."

00:08:18.800 | So foods and sex in marriage created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe

00:08:27.680 | and know the truth.

00:08:29.280 | "For everything created by God is good.

00:08:33.200 | Nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by

00:08:40.800 | the word of God and prayer."

00:08:43.000 | Oh, my.

00:08:44.000 | Every word there almost begs for a sermon or an essay or something.

00:08:49.040 | And then he adds in chapter 6, verse 17, "Don't set your hope on uncertain riches, but on

00:08:54.240 | God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy."

00:09:00.640 | Now I wrote an article once, ages ago, called "How to Drink Orange Juice to the Glory of

00:09:06.440 | God."

00:09:07.440 | And that's what I'm being asked.

00:09:10.440 | So let's make orange juice the test case, and we'll end with just a few illustrations

00:09:15.200 | of, so how do you drink orange juice to the glory of God?

00:09:18.680 | Number one, I will affirm joyfully from the word of God that the color yellow is a gift

00:09:25.100 | of God.

00:09:26.100 | The sweet taste is a gift of God.

00:09:28.880 | The nourishment and the way my body uses it is a gift of God.

00:09:32.840 | The sun and the rain that grew the oranges is a gift of God.

00:09:36.320 | The trucking and the grocery chain that brought it to me is a gift of God.

00:09:40.520 | And the list could go on and on.

00:09:41.760 | I will gladly, joyfully say that out loud.

00:09:45.600 | I will feel that.

00:09:47.120 | Number two, I will lift my heart and voice in prayer, thanking God, and I will do this

00:09:53.480 | often so that others can know where all this came from and how wise and strong and good

00:10:00.520 | God is.

00:10:01.520 | Number three, I will remind myself that I do not deserve this juice.

00:10:07.640 | I deserve to be in hell today.

00:10:10.040 | And so I will give thanks that my sins are forgiven and that this pleasure is in fact

00:10:18.620 | bought for me.

00:10:19.720 | This orange juice pleasure is a blood bought gift for this child of God on the way to heaven.

00:10:30.360 | Number four, I will remind myself that this particular pleasure, this taste, this coolness

00:10:38.480 | on my tongue, this nourishment reveals something of God to my senses and my soul that could

00:10:49.820 | not be known any other way.

00:10:53.580 | That's why the world was created, because all of it is like a prism giving us some new

00:10:58.980 | sight of the glory of God.

00:11:01.680 | And then finally, I will share this juice in love with others at the table.

00:11:07.560 | I won't hoard it all, and I will use the strength that it gives me to live for the glory of God.

00:11:15.780 | Orange juice to the glory of God.

00:11:17.780 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:11:19.340 | And Trent, thanks for the question.

00:11:21.380 | Wonderful question.

00:11:22.440 | And thanks for joining us today on the podcast.

00:11:25.040 | For our feed, our archive, or to send us your own question, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:11:33.560 | God loves to work for those who wait for him, so how do we wait for God?

00:11:38.480 | And does waiting for God mean that we don't act?

00:11:42.020 | And when do we stop waiting and start acting?

00:11:45.160 | All of those are very important questions on the table next time when we return.

00:11:49.820 | I'm Tony Reinke, and we'll see you back here on Wednesday.

00:11:51.820 | Thanks for listening.

00:11:52.820 | [Music]

00:11:53.820 | [End]

00:11:53.820 | 1.

00:11:54.820 | Desiring God

00:11:54.820 | 2.

00:11:55.820 | What is the purpose of life?

00:11:56.820 | 3.

00:11:57.820 | What is the purpose of life?

00:11:57.820 | 4.

00:11:58.820 | What is the purpose of life?

00:11:58.820 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

How Do I Glorify God in My Daily Life?

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