Thursday, July 7, 2011

God's Glory Matters Most

I grew up attending Baptist churches in Georgia and Kentucky. God graciously brought me to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ at the young age of five. I have had the privilege of serving in Baptist churches in Alabama and Kentucky over the past 18 years. Thankfully, I have grown up in and around the church.

Yet, a few years ago I found there was something I was missing. While attending Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama I had the opportunity to hear John Piper preach. The two messages he preached were unlike anything I had ever heard and they greatly changed the course of my life.

To begin to understand that the Gospel was not all about me and my need, but to see that the chief aim of the Gospel, and, therefore, my life, was to glorify God changed the way I viewed my relationship with God, the way I studied the Bible, the way I saw the church and the way I handled relationships. Yes, God does love me (and all of humanity) very much, but there is something He treasures even more and that is His glory.

Although the message on this video was delivered in December 2009, it is a great summation of the messages I first heard in Birmingham in 1998. I pray it will be as great of a help to you as it has been to me.