Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory,
because of your love and faithfulness.
Why do the nations say, "Where is their God?"
Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him. (Psalm 115:1-3)
Trying to find God in your life is hard. Problems come in, things that you hate about yourself, the sin that so easily entangles (Hebrews 12:1). And they hurt you. They damage not only you, but also your relationship with God.
You hate it. You hate the weakness that comes in whenever it feels like it. It doesn’t even take a moment of depression. Sometimes the sin comes in when you are happy. It comes in, it seems, to mitigate that happiness, to show you that no matter how close you might feel to God, you are still a jerk.
People look at you and say, well, where is your God? Aren’t you Christians supposed to be bubbly and happy God people that always have everything under control?
And you feel like a jerk just like the evil one wants you to.
Our God is in heaven; he does whatever he pleases.
It is he who is in control, anyway. In Romans 7, the apostle Paul wrote about trying his best to do all the stuff he was supposed to do and failing miserably. No matter how hard he tried, he could not get it done. Romans 8 says that there is a different motivation in the life of a Christian, though.
The Christian, the follower of Jesus with the mind of Jesus within him and the fulness of the Spirit present cannot do what he has to do by himself. God takes all of his parts and fuses it into a whole. The whole is the child of God by faith in Christ Jesus. That is us.
God does what he wants. He is not a predictable God no matter what other people may say. You cannot predict him to do anything except to love and that is because it is his nature to do so.
The glory does not come to us. The failure belongs to us. The glory belongs to him.
Anything we do that is good, no matter how small, is because of him. We serve him, we love him, we acknowledge him. And when we do, he acknowledges us. It is all because of his love and faithfulness.
May he fill me and keep me from sin and the sadness that always follows such, the knowledge of my failure to do what he wants.
To your name be the glory.
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