Glory in the Ordinary

 Glory in the Ordinary - Myra Dempsey - https://gcdiscipleship.com/article-feed/glory-in-the-ordinary My laptop currently sits on our island in the middle of our kitchen, and I stand here typing while I flit between making coffee and unloading the dishwasher. When I was akid my mom bemoaned my lack of ability to stick to one task until it was completed, a frustration I can totally empathize with now as a parent! She would tell me that I was “fluttering around” like an off-task butterfly, and I can’t help but laugh at how muchthat pattern persists in me today. So, as I land momentarily on this flower of writing, let me encourage you that whatever mundane task you put your hands to today, for whatever length of time, you can experience glory in the ordinary. God’s glory is no small or trivial topic, and this article isn’t going to get anywhere near unpacking it as fully as humanly possible. But I’m thankful God gives us—his forgetfulchildren—a vast array of gospel reminders. My husband recently defined glory in this way: “splendor, honor, fullness of, the most truthful expression of, weightiness.” We see this meaning of the word in a passage like Ephesians 1:11–14, which uses the phrase “to the praise of his glory” two separate times. The surprise to the believers is that it’s talking about us! We are meant to display God’s splendor. If you’re like me, you may wonder, “How is my ordinary life supposed to honor the weightiness of who God is?” JESUS DOESN’T NEED OUR PR Whenever I’m confronted with difficult things in Scripture, I turn too quickly to my own fleshly solutions. If my life is meant to be to the praise of God’s glory, then Imust need to step up my PR game and put a pretty picture out there for the world. Maybe God wants me to billboard my productivity or church involvement. Maybe my kids will model quick obedience or my written words will garner enough likes and shares to boostmy brand of “good Christian.” But the truth is Jesus doesn’t need our PR. We don’t craft or clean up Jesus’s image to help the world see his glory. He is already utterly glorious. As we submit to his kingshipand allow his Spirit to mold us, we become more clear conduits for the glory that is already there. My best attempts at shining up the gospel apart from abiding in Christ serve more as blockages, like the clumps of mud and leaves I scooped out of our guttersthis past fall. The living water of the gospel can’t flow through me powerfully when I pack in my own good works too. When I try to give Jesus good PR by looking good on the outside but my heart is not resting in the finished work of Jesus, I subconsciously pass along a burden to those whoactually need to hear Jesus say, “Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). His burden is easy and his yoke is light because he has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. Paul reminded the saints in Ephesusthat, “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ . . . by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the giftof God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:4–5, 8). God knows we tend to drift back toward our flesh, including our self-sufficiency and works based righteousness. The Spirit inspired Paul to make the grace-based nature ofthe gospel plain to his audience, and we still need those reminders today. God has graciously given us his Word and his Spirit to constantly course-correct and return us to the fountain of living water. Ad fontes, or back to the sources, was notonly a necessary war cry during the Reformation, but also a needed, daily reminder for Christians in 2022. I know I’m falling into the “Be good PR for Jesus” trap when I desperately hope people are impressed by me. Or when I walk away from an interaction thinking, “Wow, she isawesome,” rather than, “Wow, Jesus is awesome!” These moments point out to me that it’s actually my own PR that I am most concerned with, not Jesus’s, and the greatest threat to that is confession of sin. CONFESSION IS THE WAY FORWARD The truth is one of the greatest ways to reflect God’s glory to the world around us is through vulnerable confession and transparency about our neediness. The very thing thatour flesh fears will diminish God’s glory being seen in us is precisely how he has sovereignly chosen to most clearly display his glory through us. As we confess our sin and lack, we point a neon sign to his mercy and strength. And through confession we arechanged and set free! We let go of the crushing weight of performing perfectly and instead embrace that beautiful, easy yoke of the gospel. Because we are already fully accepted in Christ, admitting our shortcomings and dependence loses its stigma. We don’t have to fear being needy. We must actively reject thelie that self-sufficiency equals maturity, or that self-improvement should precede confession. Aren’t we more comfortable sharing our struggles in the past tense? How often we let fear and pride rob us of one of God’s greatest means for help and comfort—eachother. Christ’s atoning death purchased and sealed a collective of people, not autonomous individuals. God sovereignly chose to give us his Spirit, so in our times of need will we believe him and allow the Spirit in other believers to minister to us? The Greek word for “confess” in Scripture can be translated “to say the same thing; to agree.” When we share our struggles with others we are agreeing with the gospel—thatit is not our works we boast in, that our identity is secure in Christ, and that we will find joy and freedom as we obey our Father’s commands (James 5:16). In just an ordinary, perhaps awkward-feeling conversation, we can experience and display the gloryof God. EMBRACING THE ORDINARY The gospel frees us from finding our identity and worth in our performance, which enables us to confess our sin to one another; it also sets us free from believing culturaldefinitions of success. Every gathering of humans throughout history has decided what is good, beautiful, and desirable and what is not. Having a platform and lots of followers on social media are current hallmarks of success, and we still tend to laud thefamous. Christians are tempted to believe that extraordinary talents widely seen are the most effective for building up the Church. But the same Savior who willingly put on flesh and dependence also embodied an upside-down definition of kingly rule. His humbleservant’s posture grated on people’s expectations like the sand he washed from disciples’ feet. Jesus taught with his life and words that obedience to God will always supersede conforming to human expectations. Wherever God has placed you, obeying him will lead to your joy and the praise of his glory! I’m thankful for brothers and sisters who are tasked with standing on stages andproclaiming the good news—that is their ordinary. Before we hear them teach, they have prayed and prepared, likely spent years using their God-given gifts in their local churches, have battled their flesh over and over, have repented and confessed to others,and have struggled to wait on God’s timing. And all of that continues when they step off of the stage as well. Don’t believe the lie that others have “arrived” while you alone still struggle. We are all on this gospel mission together, equally dependent onthe Spirit moment by moment. God is too big and too good to reserve his exciting mission for just a select few. How could I believe wholeheartedly that our incredible Creator designed every atom, everymountain range, every vibrant shade on every species of animal, yet only handpicks extroverted and eloquent speakers to proclaim his glory? You, dear friend, have been hand crafted by our sovereign God to uniquely display his glory in this world. Please don’tbelieve the lie that you need a platform to be significant or a certain type of gifting to be useful. You—right where you are—have access to hearts and minds who need to see and hear the gospel proclaimed. And it’s through abiding in Christ in everyday, ordinarymoments that you will accomplish that grand mission. Maybe you feel the weight of the seemingly insignificant rhythms in your home—changing diapers, or endless laundry, or unimaginative meals prepared to keep your family sustained.Or maybe you wonder if your job is holy enough as you pour your time and creativity into a team that rarely speaks about Jesus unless it’s on the verge of cursing in frustration. Take heart, because you are not there by accident, and there is more happeningbehind the scenes than you realize! THERE’S GLORY IN THE ORDINARY Even in life’s mundane tasks, God is shaping us into a people who beautifully reflect his glory to the world. Left to our own devices, we will never naturally drift towardholiness. We rely totally and completely on God to rewire us and re-mold us, making us more like his son, thereby making us more and more holy. Because he loves us so perfectly and immensely, there isn’t a moment of our existence that he won’t use to accomplishjust that. Those late-night work hours, those early morning feedings, those middle-of-the-day grocery store runs, they are all clay cutters in the hands of our perfect potter, wielded with precision to trim away all that does not drive us deeper into him.He knows that we are only alive in him, that all of the joy and purpose we crave is found in him alone. Nothing is wasted, dear friend, and you are not in a green room waiting for that call up to the main stage. You have been knit together by an intentional God, and his Kingdom is not of this world. Our culture, like every other gathering of humans throughout history, has decidedwhat is beautiful, what is successful, what is desirable, and what is not. When you are regenerated and filled with the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, your citizenship changes. Believer, you are made new and set free “from”—from the penalty ofsin, from our old patterns of thinking and behaving, and from the exhausting task of trying to measure up to this world’s standards. You are also set free “to”—to rest in Christ’s finished work on your behalf, to embrace others without comparison or expectation, and to search the Scriptures joyfully tolearn more about your new kingdom and the King who reigns there and in your heart simultaneously. God is creating us into people who can enjoy and obey him now and also thrive in his physical presence for eternity to come. Jonathan Edwards said, “God is glorifiednot only by His glory being seen, but by its being rejoiced in.” May we be a people who see God’s glory as we behold him, who display it clearly and vulnerably to the world around us, and who rejoice in it—even in the most ordinary moments of life.