Why Am I Here?

From Gospel Translations

Audio Transcript

God does all that he does to display his glory for the full and lasting enjoyment of all who embrace Christ as their highest treasure. God does everything that he does — everything that he does — in order to display his glory for the enjoyment of all those who find in Christ their highest treasure.

Isaiah 43:6–7: “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory.” I know beyond the shadow of a doubt why you were made. You were made for God’s glory. Isn’t that amazing that I can stand in front of these people and say, “I know totally with confidence why every one of you in this room was created. You were created for the glory of God”? Now, that is an ambiguous statement, and I have thrown it around for years and realize how ambiguous “for the glory of God” is in people’s ears.

I’ve come up with this little analogy to clarify how you should not glorify God and how you should glorify God. It’s the telescope-microscope analogy because magnify and glorify are very similar in their meaning biblically. Paul says, “My aim is to magnify Jesus Christ” (see Philippians 1:20). That’s the same as glorify Jesus Christ.

But, oh, how ambiguous the word magnify is. Does it mean magnify God like a microscope magnifies or like a telescope magnifies? A microscope makes little teeny things look bigger than they are, and a telescope makes gigantic things that to the naked eye look little look more like what they really are.

Now, which way are you called upon to magnify God? The answer is like a telescope, not a microscope. It is blasphemy to magnify God like a microscope: “Oh, poor God. He is so teeny, and so small, I must now make him look bigger than he is.” That’s blasphemy. But in fact, in this world after the fall, God to most people is either not on their radar screen at all, or a little tiny dot that might show through the smog of sin every two or three weeks with just a little twinkle that you might say exists — but with zero significance.

Your calling is you are on planet Earth to put a telescope to the eye of the world. That’s why you exist. By your behavior, your parenting, the way you do your job, the way you worship, and the way you handle your things in life, everyone should read off of your life, “God is great.” That’s why you exist.