For His Glory

Romans 11:33-36 Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! 34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?” 35 “Or who has first given to Him And it shall be repaid to him?” 36 For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.

I really didn’t know until studying this passage that Paul was so moved by God he just had to praise God. Paul had spent the first eleven chapters of his likely greatest writing expounding deeply on salvation, and here he just can’t contain himself any longer and pens out a closing praise to who God is. He is likely overcome in heavenly awe of a glimpse of the realization of how big God is over everything; a glimpse of heavenly sovereignty, a minuscule taste of how unsearchable the greatness of the One he calls Lord is over all of creation; a quick glimpse of the unrecognizable time to the One who sees it all the same, therefore has power over the limit he has placed on us, that one limit is unsearchable. Time is a limit God placed on his creation, a limit that effects our minds, effects our comprehension of many things, yet also helps us to realize by his creation at how great he is, and deserves such praise as Paul could not contain.

How could I pen what I cannot explain? How can I pen, or explain if you will, what I do not understand? All the great scholars have been so moved by God that they have expounded on his sovereignty, on the level of his might that has been shown to them. I am a nobody in His army, a private first class that claims no authority, but I just like you, have a heart for my God that I cannot contain such as Paul. I quote many times the prophet Isaiah, how he penned what God laid on his heart. Isaiah 55:8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. 9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. All throughout the Old Testament God used prophets to proclaim how great he is. He used the prophets to call out the sins of the people; God used them to proclaim repentance from their sins, and warned of the coming judgement of God upon those who did not repent. God showed his glory to these prophets, and those glimpses of God were so great they could not remain silent or care what anyone thought, they were the patriarchs of bold faith going into great nations and proclaiming against their sins against God.

Paul wrote of a hidden struggle most of us face, the anxieties of life. Paul wrote of how when we focus on God, how big he truly is, and seek him with all prayers and supplications throughout his epistles, that worry of life will leave us. We will gain a heavenly peace within us the world desires but cannot understand without a like heart for God. Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. When the Apostle John was writing about the gift of the Holy Spirit, he penned some of the most beautiful words of this peace that God gives those who truly believe. John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. If you will seek God with all your heart, mind, body and soul, he will reveal himself to you. You will change from the inside out, and those glimpses he gives you of his glory, you will proclaim as all the prophets and Apostles did in the Bible; you will become a light unto a very dark world, and God will give you a hope and peace and power that all the world desires, because you live your life for his glory.