God Will Not Share His Glory

I was listening to a song this morning that has a line in it, "You will not share your glory with another." From what I understand, the story behind the song is a little complicated. It was written by a worship leader at a church, after a brief mandated suspension. The pastor felt that the worship team was getting kind of a collective big head, as in, they had a general attitude of 'look what we can do' rather than an attitude of glorifying God. That sort of defeats the purpose of the worship team. Anyway, the pastor talked to them about it, and asked them to take a break from leading worship. During this time, they reflected on their collective attitude, and realized that the pastor was right, and made a commitment to use worship for worship and not for self-promotion. The first several times that I heard the song, I thought that line had to do with the fact that there is no other God but God, but then I heard how the song came about and realized that what they are really saying is that God won't even share His glory with someone making a show of serving Him. You either are serving Him legitimately of a pure heart, giving all honor and glory to Him, or you are serving yourself.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus did a good job of explaining this: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." Your light, meaning your example, so shine, that men may see your good works, and glorify your Father. Seems kind of backwards, doesn't it? But it isn't. Remember that we can do nothing of ourselves, so if what we are doing is really good works, then God is the one actually doing the work, anyway (I have blogged about this before). In John 12, Jesus says that if we lift Him up, we will draw others to Him--that's what we, as Christians are supposed to be about, anyway.