Your glory is who you really are, the “ultimate you,” the true person hidden inside that no one has ever really seen. Your full glory is everything you were born to do that you haven’t done yet; everything you’ve dreamed but haven’t accomplished yet. Once recognized and revealed, your full glory will bring to your life a greater sense of purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction than any- thing else. As Os Guinness writes in his book, The Call, “We human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest
gifts that are truly us.”2
That’s what it means to find your glory: to recognize and exer- cise your gifts, to discover who you are meant to be and what you 2. Os Guinness, The Call (Nashville, TN: Word Publishing, a div. of Thomas
are meant to do, and to devote your life and your energy to becom- ing that person. There must be a moment in life for each of us when we can say, “This is it!”—a moment when we and our glory become “one.” It is a time when we get “in sync” with our glory, a time when the printer finally starts talking to the computer. When we reach that place, we will have realized God’s purpose for our life. Until then, we have no “right” to die. None of us are supposed to die until we have fully manifested the glory of God trapped inside us.
To glorify someone means to show or manifest everything he expects from you. For example, if my Compaq® laptop computer performs according to the expectations of its manufacturer, it “brings glory” to the Compaq® company. The company is con- cerned about its reputation because my computer carries the Com- paq® name. In the same way, God is concerned about the reputation of His name. As human beings we carry God’s name— His image—and He wants us to perform according to His expecta- tions. We do this by fulfilling every design function He built into us and becoming all He planned for us to be.
In the Bible, a person’s name was the same as his reputation. Throughout the Scriptures we see examples of God being very jeal- ous for the reputation of His name. Jesus was also jealous for His Father’s name:
Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified….Now My heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again” ( John 12:23;27-28).
Jesus knew that His “moment of glory” would be the cross. There He would completely fulfill everything He was born to do. That’s why He said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Until that moment arrived, Jesus had no “right” to die; it
was not His time. When Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify Your name,” He was saying, “Father, bring out of Me all of Your expectations in order to protect Your reputation.” Jesus knew all along that His own death on the cross would be the fulfillment of His prayer. When- ever we pray or sing to God, “Glorify Your name,” we are asking for the same thing Jesus did, that God will bring out of us everything He expects of us for the honor of His reputation. We are asking Him to bring us to our “moment of glory.”
If we die without finishing what we were born to do, we are messing with God’s reputation, because God doesn’t fail. He wants us to bring out our full glory; that’s part of His purpose for our lives. Understanding this, seeking to follow and obey the Lord, and working to discover and expose our true glory will help keep us alive. God wants us to die empty; He doesn’t want us taking any of our glory to the grave. The Gospel writer John mentions several times how Jesus’ enemies wanted to seize Him or put Him to death but did not because “His time had not yet come.” Jesus’ appointed time—His “moment of glory”—came the night He was betrayed, delivered into the hands of His enemies, and crucified. Until then He was safe from their grasp.
I realized years ago that my glory is to help other people discover theirs, and I have not yet completed that assignment. My full glory has not come out thus far, which is why I am confident that it is not time for me to die. I fly over 200,000 miles a year, all over the world, but never fear for my safety because I know my glory. My work is not finished; God is not through with me yet.
God has a “moment of glory” for each of us. The substance of our lives is to pursue that moment until He brings us into it. When we have become everything we were born to be; when we have shown the world our full weight, that’s when we have glorified God.