oooooh life....

Life is hard. It is full of work, boredom, difficulty, pain, and stress, with death at the end. In the face of this grim picture, people need, consciously or unconsciously, to find meaning or purpose in life, to give them a reason to endure through the problems of living. They need something to live for.

Some people live for pleasure. They find that, while the times of pleasure may outnumber the times of pain (if they are fortunate), the times of neither pain nor pleasure - of monotony and tedium - outnumber all other times. As a reason to live, pleasure doesn't work very well.

Some live for the pride of owning things. They find that, no matter how much they have, there is always more that they don't have, and there is always someone else who has things that they don't have. As a reason to live, pride of possession doesn't work very well.

Some live to build something that will outlast themselves, perhaps a name or a structure or an organization, as a monument to their existence. But what one generation builds, the next may well destroy. As a reason to live, building something to last into the future doesn't work very well.

Some live for power. Some even get power. But even the most powerful can lose their power, sometimes overnight. Even if they don't lose their power, they die, their funeral comes and goes, and their power is gone - vanished as if it had never been. As a reason to live, power doesn't work very well.

Some have nothing that they live for. They have no purpose, no reason to endure the pain and tedium that life inevitably brings. They have nothing to give their life meaning; they are merely killing time until the day they die.

None of these reasons give our lives any real meaning, nor can we find real fulfillment or satisfaction within them. Never the less, there is one place (and only one) where you can find real meaning and purpose in life. You can find them in a close, personal relationship with the living God. Other reasons to live simply do not work, because they don't reflect who God created us to be - people with a relationship to Himself.

The apostle Paul put it this way:

"according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I shall not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death." (Philippians 1:20)

In glorifying (exalting) God, Paul found something to live for that transcended death.

Paul thought that glorifying God should be what we live for, too. "Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (I Corinthians 10:31)

"For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body." (I Corinthians 6:20)

In both of these passages, Paul is talking about other issues than reasons to live - meat sacrificed to idols and sexual immorality, respectively. These areas have little in common, other than asking, "how should we live our lives?" But Paul places glorifying God as the touchstone, common to both areas, by which we can test what we should do. When a purpose or objective is your basis for deciding what you should and should not do, it is the factor for what you live for. For instance, when you decide what you will do by what will bring you the most pleasure, you are living for pleasure. Paul, then, is asking us to live to glorify God.

What can we do if we don't feel the desire to live our lives to glorify God? We can often change our feelings by dwelling on God's nature, by filling our minds with the beauty of who He is. This continually reminds us of how worthy He is of all of our lives, and often creates in us the desire to live for His glory.

We can ask God to create this desire in our hearts. And in each moment, we can choose to surrender our lives to God, for Him to do His will in and through us, whether we feel like it or not.

A word of caution is in order here. Choosing to glorify God by choosing to surrender our lives to His control works very well; choosing to glorify God by choosing to exert ourselves to do so does not work. Our effort makes a poor foundation for glorifying God, because the focus turns to us - to what we do, rather than to the God we do it for.

I decided, "I'm going to live for God's glory!" I was deciding what goal I was going to exert myself to pursue. The goal was worthy, but my internal focus was still (even if subconsciously) on me - on what I was going to do. In less than a week - and without conscious effort - that good intention degenerated into totally living for myself, my will, and my desires.

Then I tried again, with more determination. Within a month, this second attempt mutated into legalism.

What went wrong? In both cases, I was honestly trying to live for God's glory, but I was using my own human effort to do so.

Then, I decided to let God control my life, to let Him produce in me that which glorifies Him. As I did so, I became more aware of how often (much too often) I was living unsurrendered to God's control, and I became more desirous of yielding those times to Him. I also grew in my awareness of God's presence and love in my daily life. This produced in me praise, worship, and love for God and others in general.

Having said this, I must admit that I am not yet very good at submitting myself to God's control of my life. Growing in this area will be a lifelong process. But I have come far enough to see that this road will lead me to a life that more and more glorifies God.

Romans 13:14 says, "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts." Christ lives in our hearts. Rather than trying to live life in my own power, I should choose to put Him on, to let Him live through me. When I do so, my life reflects God's glory to those around me. I also glorify Him directly by choosing to place His will for (and His control of) my life at this moment ahead of my own will and control.

God Himself dwells inside us. Let us allow Him to live through us, to His glory.