I was listening to a prophetic worship artist named Jonathan David Helser. And he has a track on one of his albums called “May the Lamb of God Receive the Reward of His Suffering.” It’s not a song. The entire track for five minutes is just person after person saying that statement, speaking it out. Over and over, overlapping each other, loudly, quietly, man, woman, child, just proclaiming that. And about two minutes into it, something shifted inside of me. My heart was moved.
So many times in the Bible, it talks about us receiving a reward, receiving blessings, receiving a prize. More and more though, I’m realizing that absolutely nothing in my life is about me. Nothing. Everything, everything is about God and bringing glory to Him. It’s about His will, His desires, His name, His pleasure, His life, His praise, His worship. Him. That’s it. And He is God, so He can do whatever He chooses to bring glory to His name. In Romans 9:17, it says, “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ Therefore, God has mercy on whom he chooses to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.” Pharaoh had turned his heart from God, and God used it to bring glory to His name. I read it the other day and got upset and frustrated and had to wrestle with Him over it for a good while. That’s another blog entirely…
But to bring glory to His name, He can do whatever He wants. Writing it now is even hard because my mind can’t comprehend His reasonings and understanding. But I have to remember that He is not a God of arrogance, and I can’t compare Him to a man that is just power-hungry. He is sovereign. He is good. He is loving. He is merciful. He is our Father. And He sent His son to die for us. He sent His Lamb to be slaughtered so that we could live with Him and so that He could be one with us again. His desire is that all of us return to Him. He didn’t come to suffer for nothing. God deserves the glory. Jesus, the Passover Lamb, deserves the reward for His suffering. And what is His reward? Us. Glo
rifying Him. His Bride, worshiping Him. Everything we do, say, think, should be out of love for Him, to solely bring Him glory so that the Lamb can receive His reward. Jesus will never have died in vain. Never. But I don’t want to do anything that could even hint at that thought. Our lives are not about us. They’re not about our desires, our pleasures, our comfort, our dreams, our battles, our victories, our jobs, our kids, our families, our ministries, our anything. So when we say that God just wants us to be happy, that’s not true. God is more concerned with our character than our comfort.
But, thanks be to our Father that He loves His children and He cares about all those things because He knows that we do. I think this idea summarizes Matthew 6:33 in its truest and rawest form. It says, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Along with that, Luke 11 says, “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in Heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
God desires to give us good gifts. But only after we seek Him first. It’s hard to do because we have a flesh and we have our own desires and dreams. But the very act of going after those first robs God of the chance to give them to us through a blessing. Read that again. If we really got this, and sought God first, how many more blessings could God give us? BUT, our lives are not even about the blessings we can receive! It’s not about doing good so that we will reap a reward. It’s about His glory! But in bringing Him glory, He blesses. It’s how the circle is supposed to work. That’s how it would be if we did it right, if we did all things in order to give the Lamb of God His reward. What would our lives look like if we did everything with His glory in mind? It would look like Jesus. And isn’t that what we’re supposed to look like? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be living for?
What are you living for? Or I guess I should ask, who are you living for?
Lighting Up the World,
~Eryn
