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Spiritual GPS - Destination

STORY - THE LIFE OF PAUL

It’s funny that one of the people we’d consider foundational to the success of the early church had a life that nowadays we wouldn’t consider all that successful.

Started off a religious zealot and murderer. Suffered Shipwrecks. Imprisonment. Destitution. Poverty. Beatings.

2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

So what’s the point here? The point is, we become more and more like Jesus as we encounter more and more of God’s glory.

This word here, glory, it means ‘ high renown or honor won by notable achievements’ or ‘ magnificence or great beauty’, and I think both are pretty applicable.

So paul here is telling us a few things - the destination (being transformed into the image of Christ), the route we should follow (contemplating God’s high renown, honor, notable achievements, and great beauty and magnificence), and the fuel (understanding that God’s glory to us is ever increasing)

Now, there’s a few convictions I feel we need to hold to truly understand this truth. The first is this:

God’s beauty and achievements will never stop increasing in our lives

We can’t ever believe that God is finished doing new things. We can’t ever get to that point of saying, ‘yep, that’s the best it’ll ever be. Can’t top that’ and start looking purely backwards at some external event.

STORY - A WORLD RECORD SPRINTER - Running was super important to me, suddenly couldn’t do it all that well.

Imagine what my life would look like if I made it all about ‘the days I was a runner’. Put my track shoes up on a pedestal. Consider my wicking shorts to be my ‘fancy attire’.

This is an unhealthy approach, even to normal things in life. And as Christ followers, this can have an especially deadly affect on us - and Paul gives a sly warning in the passage that you may have missed.

Paul is giving a warning here with this phrase, ‘with unveiled faces’.

Refers to Moses - Moses met directly with God, face to face. When he came away, he was literally glowing - we’re not talking ‘happy’, we’re talking ‘lightbulb’. He was freaking people out. so he put on a veil over his face.

But to the new testament writers, this veil very much represented the old testament system -a barrier in place separating us from the radiant glory of God. covering it up for the sake of comfort. Earlier in this verse, Paul even compares this veil to the way the jews relate to God - he describes it as their minds being made dull by a veil placed over their hearts. It was a bondage on the jews, something that hid them from the full presences of God.

For the jews, the veil was the law. But how can we be ‘veiled’ to God’s glory?

Lots of ways.

Ultimately boils down to this truth, this second conviction - We become ‘veiled’ when we replace God’s presence with God’s product. When you seek the ‘gift’ for the ‘giver’. When it matters more what you get out of God then the simple fact of seeking Him

That’s what the jews did. The entire law existed to point to the need for Christ and how unbelievably above us God is - but they turned it into a system of legalism and bondage.

This is why I like Paul’s life as an example of this point. He had all the distracting stuff - he had the beatings, the starvation, the persecution. He had all the things that can make you turn away and throw in the towel. Prior to his encounter with Jesus, he wore the thickest spiritual veil you could. But God gave him a new life through Jesus Christ.

And we want to believe we wouldn’t do that. But we need to ask ourselves the question - how would we react when we don’t have the ‘successful life’ that we want out of God? When we get God, but not the other things we need?

Paul was given this new destination. Being formed into the image of Chrst to spend eternity surrounded by the overwhelming glory of God.

Now, I want to be clear here - the point isn’t ‘God doesn’t do good things for us’, or even worse, ‘God does bad things to us’. The point is, ‘God doesn’t change us by giving us what we want. He changes us by giving us more of Him’.

And that’s something we can get entirely independant of our circumstances.

And that’s why I like the life of Paul. He had the kind of life that would make a person go ‘yknow what? this isn’t working’.

And he’s brutally honest sometimes. Things were sometimes too hard for him to handle. He approached some places ‘in fear and trembling’. He struggled, just like we do.

But paul had something greater than a succesful life. He had an unwaivering belief that God’s glory was enough for him to continue. It was enough for him to finish.

STORY - WHEN WE’VE BEEN HERE TEN THOUSAND YEARS… - getting bored in heaven.

And there’s a perspective shift here. It isn’t saying, ‘I need this or that to line up my way to believe in God’. But it ALSO isn’t saying ‘I don’t want these things, I want to just believe in God’.

It’s saying, ‘I refuse to let my needs determine whether or not I will follow God’. Because God’s glory is enough here. And to us, it is ever increasing, but God is infinitely better than we could imagine, and there will never be enough of God we can learn.

So I want everyone to do two things this week.

The first one is for God. It’s a request, and I know it’s one he’ll do. God, please show me more of your glory. And not just a rehash of the same old same old - something new. Something big. Something wonderful.

The second one is a commitment. We will commit to actively go out and look for it. We can’t ask God to do something new for us, and still do all the same old things we’ve ever done. Get together with someone else from the church and do a bible study. Start volunteering. Go out and have a conversation with someone about God.