Whose glory?

Like hundreds of millions of others around the world, I'm filled with national pride as I watch the Olympics.  I'm delighted when a Canadian athlete wins a medal.

I'm sure the athletes want to bring glory to their country as well as to themselves.  It's great to see athletes cheer on their compatriots.

It's easy to understand national glory.  Is it as easy to understand giving God glory?

We Christians give lip-service to glorifying God.  But, in practice, I believe most of us are more interested in our glory than God's.

This is a critical issue in prayer.  Daniel Henderson says in his book Transforming Prayer: "God's glory should be our sole - and soul - motivation that frames and filters everything we pray."

In other words, we should be praying to bring glory to God.  But what does this mean?

I believe it means praying to see God's will done in our circumstances.  It means praying that God gets the credit - not us.  Sometimes, that means praising God in the midst of suffering - praising him instead of cursing him.

If we pray this way, our prayers may well change.  Instead of asking for comfort, we ask that God work things out to his glory in our own small world.

It's the way the young Christian church in Jerusalem prayed in Acts 4 in the midst of persecution. These believers did not ask for God's protection.  They asked that he enable them to preach the gospel boldly and that God perform miracles to bring glory to his name.  Those prayers were answered powerfully.

"Praying for God's glory is a struggle," writes Henderson. "But it is the struggle that can and must be won every day."