Focus: Where Is The Glory? (Pt.3)

Text: Eph.3:21

"Unto him be GLORY IN THE CHURCH by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen."

God's glory cannot be faked. Man's glory cannot take the place of God's glory. We all long for the fresh glory of God. Job reminisced on his past glory. He looked back to the days when "my glory was fresh in me, and my bow was renewed in my hand." The absence of God's glory in the church is intolerable. It is time to recover God's glory in the church. God's glory is our story. Joseph tells his brothers, "And ye shall TELL my father of ALL MY GLORY in Egypt, and of all that ye have SEEN; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither" (Gen.45:13). The church has God's mandate to tell of His glory, and we are called to tell of the glory we have seen.

No glory, no story. Moses prayed to see God's glory. "And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory" (Ex.33:18). God's glory can be seen. When Jacob was told of the glory of Joseph by those who saw it firsthand - his own sons, his spirit was lifted. He was like a man who came back from the land of the dead. The Scripture says, "And when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob revived: And Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die" (Gen.45:27,28). He saw the evidence of their story in the wagons. O Lord, help Your people to see Your glory! 

The glory is the evidence that the world needs to see. I call those wagons 'the wagons of revival'. The glory of God has evidence. Where's the glory? Where are the wagons - the evidence of God's manifest presence and glory? After the tabernacle was set up in the wilderness, the glory of the Lord came down. Moses reports, "Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle" (Ex.40:34,35). The glory was overwhelming and overpowering. Moses couldn't stand it. 

Much later, Jesus Christ became the tabernacle of God among men, and John says, "And we beheld his glory."

Concerning the temple of Solomon, we read, "And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the LORD, So that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD" (1Kgs.8:10-11). From the highest heaven God's glory came near, and everyone felt the impact of His presence and nearness.

In 1943, Abraham Maslow wrote a piece entitled, 'The Hierarchy of Human Needs'. In it he opined that man's highest need was 'self-actualization.' But in 1971, he wrote another piece entitled, 'The Farther Reaches of Human Nature', in which he described 'Transcendence' as man's highest need. That means he had a rethink, and changed from self-actualization to transcendence as man's highest need. And what is transcendence? 

The opposite of transcendence is immanence. What is immanence? In the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, Matthew recalls the prophecy of Isaiah, which says, "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name EMMANUEL, which being interpreted is, GOD WITH US." Emmanuel and immanence share the same root. It has to do with nearness, and that tells us that transcendence is that which is vertically distant and out of touch. Transcendence is that which is beyond us. It is deeper than higher than what our little minds can fathom. We can't relate to it. It's a lofty reality. The human mind is too tiny to grasp the reality of God's transcendence. Our God is resplendently transcendent, but in Christ He has become resplendently immanent. In Christ the far-away God has come close. He is now in our neighborhood. He is not just the God of history; He is our contemporary. He lives among us. That is glory! John says, "And we beheld his glory…" Glory is the brilliance and brightness of God. 

In Christ the unknown God, to the Greeks, is now known to us, because Christ has revealed Him to us. Man only actualizes himself when he comes into contact and into communion with the transcendent God.

I believe that part of our responsibility as God's people is to dismantle all structures and systems that try to displace or replace God in man's mind. Success is failure until a man finds God. It is impossible for man to achieve significance or fulfillment if he relegates or trivializes God. Success makes a man without God extremely miserable, and to achieve significance will be like chasing the wind and catching nothing. The Lord Jesus Christ tells Martha, "Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" Believing is the ground of seeing.

The church needs a fresh encounter with the glory of God. We can't reflect the glory that we have not encountered yet. When we encounter the transcendence of God, it becomes in our experience the manifest presence of God. Self-actualization happens when we connect with the transcendent God. By seeing the invisible Moses achieved the impossible. It is the glory we see that we seize. We only lay hold of the glory we behold. God's glory is the beauty of the church, and it is also her story.

Join me in praying for the return of God's glory in the church of Jesus Christ all over the world. Glory revives, and it is the revived believer who will evangelize the world.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter