March 16, 2011 (to glorify Him)

a small group Bible study

As much as I pray that
the SonRays devotionals
are a blessing to many…
I also pray that
they are not enough.

I pray that they will be read
simply to ignite a desire
within you for more…
more intimate communion
with our Lord and Savior.

This intimate relationship
with our Father
is to glorify Him.

“The supreme motive in our redemption
is not for us to receive anything.
Rather, we have been redeemed
so that God may receive worship –
so that our lives might glorify Him.
Any personal blessing for us
is a divine response
to the fulfillment of that supreme purpose…
We are to seek to glorify God
before we seek to gain anything from Him.
To be concerned primarily with the blessings
is to experience salvation
in a shallow, self-centered manner.”
- John MacArthur

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy
because the praise not merely expresses
but completes the enjoyment;
it is its appointed consummation.
If it were possible for a created soul
fully to ‘appreciate,’ that is,
to love and delight in,
the worthiest object of all,
and simultaneously at every moment
to give this delight perfect expression,
then that soul would be in supreme blessedness.
To praise God fully
we must suppose ourselves
to be in perfect love with God,
drowned in, dissolved by that delight which,
far from remaining pent up
within ourselves as incommunicable bliss,
flows out from us incessantly again
in effortless and perfect expression.
Our joy is no more separable from the praise
in which it liberates and utters itself
than the brightness a mirror receives
is separable from the brightness it sheds.
- C.S. Lewis