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| Great question! I thought I would try and answer it.
I think it is important to define what "giving God glory" means. As far as I can figure out, "glory" means something like reputation. So in giving God glory, we are adding to his reputation. Like BigPhilly has said, one way to add to God's glory is to obey his commandments (John 14:15)
Luke 2:20, 5:25-26, 7:16, 13:13 and many others all show that we glorify God by thanking and praising him (basically giving him credit for what he did.)
Luke 17:11-19 shows where a cleansed leper gave God glory by thanking Jesus for cleansing him.
Acts 12:21-23 an angel of the Lord killed Herod because he did not give glory to God by allowed the people to call him a god
Revelation 4:9-11 shows that worship and praise are ways to give God glory
Revelation 16:9 shows that repenting of your sin gives God glory
Also many other verses seem to link glorifying God to praising God or giving him credit where his credit is due. (check a concordance under "glorify")
I think we give God glory by keeping his commandments and giving him credit for what he does. Since James 1:17 teaches "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." We need to give God credit and praise him for all the good things we have in life. All of these come to him. I think most of us are a long way from this.
So I like the thought on telling someone who praised you on an accomplishment, "Thanks, I did well because of the gifts God blessed me with." I believe this glorifies God.
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| You all might have noticed I have been away from Xanga for a while. I no longer have time to surf the net anymore. (An infant at home can do that to you.) I have not read or posted any Xanga for over 2 months now. WOW!
I appologize to all of my friends who are tirelessly sharing their lives, I am a couple months behind. Send me a comment if you would like prayer in a specific area. Otherwise, I don't know know when I will catch up on reading your posts. I still pray for you all in general.
I don't think I will be very active in the future as well. I might get time to post every few months or so but not weekly like in the past.
So to save time, I am consolidating to facebook. To all of my Xanga friends, look me up on facebook if you haven't already.
Steve
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| A new hobby of mine over the past year has been to read blogs. It most blogs from time to time offer complaints about some kind of problem regarding religion, politics, or social reform.
I am a person who does not like to sit around and do nothing when I see a problem. So I have engaged people in the religious debates. I have sent letters to my representatives and worked to personally meet the folks who are supposed to be representing my views in Washington. I have researched what I can do to help with social reform. In each of these cases, I have seen hardly any results. Representatives voted against my wishes, social concerns go unnoticed with policies unchanged. Religious views might change in the details but not in the heart. So I quit.
I will no longer try and "change the world" through these means.
Instead, I am going to contribute to the problem by committing myself to changing the hearts of the people around me. My mission will not be successful if only their hearts are changed. I want them to in turn dedicate themselves to changing the hearts of those around them as well.
It is only through the changing of people's hearts can the problems of politics be changed. It is only through the changing of people's hearts can the problems of social issues be addressed effectively. It is only through changing hearts can religious issues be addressed in any kind of meaningful way.
So my contribution to the problem is to renew my focus on changing hearts through the power of the Holy Scriptures. Even if the global issues remain, the world for some will be changed.
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| I love funny chain emails. I hate dumb ones.
I have often thought it would be funny to start my own chain email.
Any ideas?
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