What Are You Living For?
Reading: 2 Peter 1:16–19
Helen Keller, who lost both her sight and hearing in early childhood yet became an author and lecturer, once observed that the only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision. Her remark exposes a quiet condition of our age: most of us see perfectly well, and yet many drift through life without any settled conviction about what we are living for.
Scripture gives this pursuit a name: glory. Every person orders life around some great good at the centre, whether career, family, security or reputation, in the belief that if it could only be attained, everything else would fall into place. The Bible adds a sobering observation, however. We become like whatever we give our glory to. What we admire, we imitate; what we love, we gradually come to resemble.
The question is therefore not merely what we desire, but whether the object of our desire is strong enough to bear the weight we place upon it. When employment ends, when health fails, or when a family is wounded, our devotion is put to the test, and many things we have trusted prove unable to hold us.
The apostle Peter, who witnessed the transfiguration of Christ, later assured struggling believers that they had not followed “cunningly devised fables” but had been “eyewitnesses of His majesty.” Our confidence rests not upon a vision of our own making, but upon the person of Jesus Christ.
Reflect: What presently occupies the centre of your life, and would it hold you in your hardest season?
▶ Watch the full sermon: Glory, Grit, & Grace