I was reading Psalms 29 this morning, which is about the power of God. Here it is in its entirety:
Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength.
Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
The voice of the Lord is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the Lord is upon many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.
He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.
The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests; and in his temple doth every one speak of His glory.
The Lord sitteth upon the flood; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever.
The Lord will give strength unto His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace.
Verse 2 is the one that really gets me, personally. “Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” What glory is due unto the name of the Lord? What kind of glory should we be giving Him? Charles Spurgeon put it better than I ever could when he commented on this particular verse in his book about the Psalms called Treasury of David. He says, “A third time the admonition is given (to give glory to the Lord), for men are backward in glorifying God, and especially great men. Unbelief and distrust, complaining and murmuring, rob God of His honor.” As believers, we have something within us that others lack. We have Christ in us, the hope of glory. We’ve been rescued from ourselves and from our separation from relationship with the Creator of the universe. When we complain or murmur about our situation, our job, the country, or the crazy things that happen in our society every day, we’re basically saying that the hope that is in us actually isn’t enough.
Doesn’t this cheapen the sacrifice that rescued us? I think this makes it look like nothing is really different about us here and now, and that we’re just waiting to be rescued from this earth at some future point in time, but we just have to hold on and struggle through long enough to make it there. Why would the people around us who are hurting and need help want what we have, when we’re right there beside them whining about what’s wrong with the company we work for, the rising prices of fuel, utilities, taxes, and food, or who is (or isn’t) currently in offices of power? What kind of hope is that portraying?
As Christians, we really don’t have the legal right to be complainers, or to have a “bad day”. We are called to be content when we have much, AND when we have nothing. When things look great, AND when the outlook may not appear to be rainbows and unicorns.
We’re supposed to be the light. We’re not called to sit in the darkness and bemoan the fact that it’s so dark in here. Light shines. So why aren’t we shining? Have we lost our focus and forgotten who we are? Or are we simply afraid we’ll run out of oil if we share what we tend to think of as what little we have with others? I guarantee you, the more we share and give what we have within us away, the more we’ll have. We weren’t called to be stagnant lakes of water. We’re supposed to be conduits of rivers of living water. We should be raging rivers. Think Niagara falls here! All the time, we’re open 24/7, and we never close, the lights never go out, and the spigots are always turned up to eleventy (aka: full blast plus three notches). THIS is the only way we’ll ever have a life worth living that will touch EVERYONE around us, and will be living PROOF that Christ is the only living God. Proof that EVERY person was created with a purpose. Proof that God loves EVERY person. Proof that EVERY person is an eternal being. Unless we see people that way, we won’t break the valves off of our spigots. The only person that can talk you out of who you truly are is yourself. So, c’mon, people! You got this. Give it away. Starting TODAY!