Giving Glory to God

Pre-Easter Fast

March 4 - April 3, 2010

pastor pete A series of Scripture meditations written during our time of fasting and prayer as a church.

by Pastor Pete Beck III

These meditations are copyrighted,

but feel free to download them for

personal use or to forward to friends.

Giving Glory to God in a Perhaps Surprising Way

I will give thanks to You, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to You among the nations. 10 For Your lovingkindness is great to the heavens And Your truth to the clouds. 11 Be exalted above the heavens, O God; Let Your glory be above all the earth. Psalms 57:9-11 (NASB)

The primary reason we have dedicated a month to seek the Lord through fasting and prayer is bring pleasure to God's heart. Almost from the beginning, mankind has been the source of a great deal of pain for our Creator. How his heart must have hurt when Adam and Eve chose disobedience and shame over fellowship with Him! Every time somone chooses sin over God, I believe another dagger stabs the Savior's heart. How could this not be? God is not some unfeeling, uncaring Being. His enormous love for us is partly what sent Jesus to the cross. Anyone who would endure such pain on our behalf, must care so deeply that it is past our ability to comprehend.

I wrote that God's love for us is partly what sent Jesus to the cross. Do you know what was the greatest motivation behind His supreme sacrifice? The Bible tells us that Jesus' greatest desire was to glorify His father and do what was pleasing to him. When he agonized in prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, he surrendered his will to his heavenly Father's. Adam and Eve traded in their heavenly birthright and blessing in pursuit of the lie that they could be like God. Jesus, being God, laid down his divine status and became obedient unto death. Could there be a more stark contrast? Adam and Eve brought our Father shame, but Jesus restored to God his proper glory!

David asked:

You men, how long will you try to turn my honor into shame? How long will you love what is worthless and search for what is deceptive? (Selah) Psalms 4:2 (NET1)

The sanctification process is something God uses to deliver us from idols in our hearts. An idol is anything that takes a higher place in our thoughts and priorities than God does. Whenever we serve something besides God, we shame our Maker. People have been loving what is actually worthless and seeking that which can never satisfy for millennia. Christ came to begin a new generation of people in whom there would be a new motivation - a desire to serve God from the heart. This is the essence of the New Covenant.

“But I will make a new covenant with the whole nation of Israel after I plant them back in the land,” says the LORD. “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be my people. Jeremiah 31:33 (NET1)

Before Christ, everyone continually sought that which can never satisfy and so dishonored God. God's heart pursued mankind, as recorded in the following plea.

“Hey, all who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come! Buy and eat! Come! Buy wine and milk without money and without cost! 2 Why pay money for something that will not nourish you? Why spend your hard-earned money on something that will not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is nourishing! Enjoy fine food! 3 Pay attention and come to me! Listen, so you can live! Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. Isaiah 55:1-3 (NET1)

There is something undeniably and stubbornly insane about sin. Mankind has hotly pursued the lie of sin for centuries, while God has been stretching out his hands, inviting us to come back to him. When Jesus encountered the woman at the well, he told her:

...“If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” John 4:10 (NET1)

When we hear the invitation to be reconciled to God that is the gospel, and we respond as did the Samaritan woman, we bring glory to God again. The simple act of trusting in Jesus breaks the bands of our God-dishonoring service to deception and lust. Believing God undoes the sinful act of rejecting God and believing a lie that took place in the Garden of Eden so long ago. Once we have glorified God by believing the gospel, there begins a lifelong process of sanctification whereby God's Spirit roots out of us every trace of God shaming idolatry. The worthless and deceptive must be removed from our lives for us to properly glorify God. When we fast, we ask God to specifically target these types of things in our lives. The fast in which God delights is when we allow him to root out what dishonors him so that we may drink more deeply of His lifegiving Spirit.

No, this is the kind of fast I want. I want you to remove the sinful chains, to tear away the ropes of the burdensome yoke, to set free the oppressed, and to break every burdensome yoke. 7 I want you to share your food with the hungry and to provide shelter for homeless, oppressed people. When you see someone naked, clothe him! Don’t turn your back on your own flesh and blood! 8 Then your light will shine like the sunrise; your restoration will quickly arrive; your godly behavior will go before you, and the LORD’s splendor will be your rear guard. 9 Then you will call out, and the LORD will respond; you will cry out, and he will reply, ‘Here I am.’ You must remove the burdensome yoke from among you and stop pointing fingers and speaking sinfully. 10 You must actively help the hungry and feed the oppressed. Then your light will dispel the darkness, and your darkness will be transformed into noonday. 11 The LORD will continually lead you; he will feed you even in parched regions. He will give you renewed strength, and you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring that continually produces water. Isaiah 58:6-11 (NET1)

Doesn't the last part of the above passage which is underlines sound like what Jesus spoke to the woman at the well? If I had been writing the passage above to fit this meditation, I would have compressed it so that it read: No, this is the kind of fast I want. I want you to remove the sinful chains,...He will give you renewed strength, and you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring that continually produces water. But God put something between these verses that give us a tremendous key to understanding the nature of true sanctification. God is not simply removing from our lives that which offends: He is making us into a people who actively demonstrate his love to the lost and hurting. Literally, verse ten says we must "furnish" ourselves for the hungry. Wow! Fasting takes us to places we might not have expected!

So, to conclude, we bring glory to God by turning away from idols and placing our trust in Jesus. Then God begins in us a lifelong sanctification process through which we become more and more like Jesus. God is turning our hearts away from sin and idols and toward those who are lost in sin and toward the hurting, the hungry and the oppressed. God is calling us to give ourselves to Him by giving ourselves to them!

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