Bouncing Back to God

A week ago, I saw two people give their lives to Christ. This happened on two different scenarios, two different times but one similar environment. This was at Mamlaka Hill Chapel. The first happened on Tuesday. Here, I lead a team of nine men, who desire to be the greatest men we can count on. As I was facilitating the “Man Enough Programme”, one told me that he had decided to give his life to Christ. But first, he had told me about his past. This was the first time I convinced someone to surrender his life to Christ since I gave my life to Christ three years ago. I was moved, but I felt that God was using me to be a fisherman. I prayed for him and the entire group.

The second one happened on Sunday. This lady, a third year student in campus had been invited by a friend to Mamlaka Hill Chapel. So she was brought to our visitors lounge. I serve at the Hospitality Ministry at Mamlaka hill Chapel. So as we shared about our church, we asked visitors whether they had prayer items so that we pray for them. Hers was that she wanted God’s faith to be upon her. However, she was saying though she was not that much sure about it. So as the visitors left the lounge, she remained behind. After a small chat, she told us of her predicaments. We asked her whether she knew Christ and the response was she wanted to know him. We prayed for her.

In the two scenarios, I encouraged them to sign up for New Believers Class at Mamlaka (This is a discipleship class that helps those who recently gave their lives to Christ to grow spiritually – and this is where I was too in 2014) upon which they agreed and were more than exciting to do so.

Both cases were two of the most moving and powerful testimonies I have ever encountered. Both knew that Jesus loved them so much that He died for them. Later before they departed, I thanked them and said how extraordinarily it was a nice feeling to be in Christ.

With specific reference to the man, He knew Christ before, but later on lagged behind immediately he joined campus. Since then, He’s never been a church attendee and he told me from then henceforth, he will be attending church. “I want to bounce back with a bang!!” That’s what he told me.

At first, I didn’t understand what he meant, so I asked him to explain. He said, ‘It’s all his grace. I need to bounce the glory back to him.’ What I later came to find out was that he had a profound understanding of grace, glory and what it means to be Christ-like.

Later on that week, I delved so much on the theme of ‘glory’. Apparently, glory runs through each of today’s readings. Let’s just for a moment look at these three verses. Psalms 115:1; Philippians 2:11; Jeremiah 2:11). Reading them, we see why, how and when to bounce the glory back up to God. 

I will break them down, analyzing each one of them.

Psalm 115:1-11

1. Why do we glorify our Lord?

The author pf Psalms gives us a boundless example of passing the glory on – bouncing it back up to God. He begins: ‘Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness’ (v.1). He goes on to provide two explanations why you should glorify and worship God.

The first is because of our experience of God’s ‘love and faithfulness’ (v.1). Worship is a comeback to what God has completed for you. Give Him all the glory.

The second is the oft-repeated biblical truth – you become like that which you worship: ‘Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them’ (v.8). So, if we worship idols, we become totally lifeless, unable to do anything of any value at all.

Put your trust in the Lord who is your ‘help and shield’ (v.9–11). If you put your faith in the Lord and worship him, you will become like him – you will be changed into his likeness and obtain fullness of life.

Philippians 1:27-2:11

2. How can we glorify HIM?

Paul expounds how you can glorify God by becoming like Jesus: ‘Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself’ (2:5). Become Christ-like in attitude because of concern for the ‘name of Jesus’ (v.10) and the ‘glory of God’ (v.11).

Live a life ‘worthy of the gospel of Christ’ (1:27). It is a privilege, not only to believe in Jesus, but also to suffer and struggle for him (v.29–30).

When people or events come contrary to you, ‘stand firm’ (v.27) in unity against all the hostility and attacks that you are destined to come across. From this extract, with shields together and spears out front, the soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder in files eight men deep. As long as they did not break rank, they were virtually invincible.

Christ calls us to ‘Stand united, singular in vision, contending for people’s trust in the Message, the good news, not recoiling or circumventing in the slightest before the opposition. Your courage and unity will show them what they’re up against: defeat for them, victory for you – and both because of God’ (v.27–28).

A Christ-like boldness is the key to this unity. Any disunity in the church would have detracted from Paul’s ‘joy’ (2:2). Disunity so often comes from ‘selfish ambition and vain conceit’ (v.3a). The key is to consider others better than yourself (v.3b), to look not only to your own interests, ‘but also to the interests of others’ (v.4).

‘Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand’ (v.3–4).

In other words, you are to have the same attitude as Jesus, who let go of his natural, legal and social status, and made himself ‘nothing’. He took ‘the very nature of a servant… he humbled himself’ and ‘became obedient to death – even death on a cross!’ (v.7–8). He took the path of downward mobility, humble service and unselfish love. If you are ever anxious about your relative status, remember that Jesus made himself lower than we could ever imagine.

And as a result, ‘God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (v.9–11).

Jeremiah 1:1-2:30

3. When can we glorify HIM?

What transpires when troubles, difficulties and disruption come into your life and the lives of those around you?

Jeremiah lived in one of the troubled periods in Israel’s history – the fall of Jerusalem and the exile in Babylon. He was prearranged with a difficult message to give to the people. He did it with great courage in the face of hostility and persecution.

The opening chapters of Jeremiah show two more ways that you can glorify God and when you can do so.

First, you glorify God when you respond to God’s call. Age is no barrier to leadership. Jeremiah was probably a teenager when God called him. He could be described as both a ‘born leader’ and a ‘born prophet’. Before his birth he was set apart to be a prophet. God said, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew and approved of you... and before you were born I separated and set you apart... I appointed you as a prophet to the nations’ (1:5).

God knows all about you – the good and the bad. His knowing leaves nothing out. He loves you. He does not necessarily approve of everything you do, but he wants you to live, like Jeremiah, with the freedom of knowing his love and approval.

The Lord tells you, as he told Jeremiah, to go wherever he tells you to go and say whatever he tells you to say (v.7). This takes the ultimate responsibility off your shoulders. Glorifying God does not mean having to try to save the whole world (that is God’s responsibility), but rather doing what God asks you to do. This will not be easy. God warns that there will be opposition (v.17–19).

Second, you glorify God when you respond to God’s correction. God asked Jeremiah to warn the people against worshiping worthless idols and to call them back to worshiping him.

Jeremiah said, ‘My people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols’ (2:11b). Not only does this deny God the glory he deserves, it is actually self-destructive. When we turn away from God we lose the blessings of relationship with him, and replace it with something useless. God laments how ‘my people have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water’ (v.13).

Again, we see that you become like whatever you worship. Those who follow ‘worthless idols’ become ‘worthless themselves’ (v.5). If you follow Jesus, you become like him. If we try to find satisfaction, meaning and purpose through our own ambitions and self-centered appetites for power, money, food, drink, and drugs, we become of no value – our lives are worthless.

In particular, they were ‘on the hunt for sex, sex, and more sex – insatiable, indiscriminate, promiscuous’ (v.24). They were ‘addicted’ and could not ‘quit’ (v.25).

Jeremiah despaired that God’s people had not responded to his correction (v.30). They had forsaken his blessings, and failed to give him glory.

Lord, our help and shield, help us to trust in you, and to experience your love and faithfulness. Help us  always to ‘bounce back to God’ and to give you all the glory.

Lord, help us to have the same attitude as Jesus. Help us to take the path that brings glory to God the Father. Help us always to bounce the glory back to you.

Lord, help us to fix my eyes on Jesus, the spring of living water, and to turn our face towards him. May we become Christ-like and give you all the glory.