The Problem with Making Yourself the Centerpiece of Your Own Spiritual Life

God’s Greater Story

One of the aspects of reverence that I have studied in my personal time with God’s word is how it positions my heart to see God rightly and, in turn, see myself rightly. I sometimes wonder if I live my life in a way where a watching world, if they didn’t know anything about Christianity, would think that I exist for God or that God exists for me?

I heard a quote years ago that described Christianity as “inviting God into your story, that you might find your place in his greater story.” The reason why I think that struck me so much is I feel like I may have lived the first ten to twenty years of my walk with the Lord as if I only believed the first half of that statement.

I believed Christianity was inviting God into my story to clean up my story and to make my story work better, rather than inviting him into my story so that I might find my place in his greater story. And I think that’s important for our understanding of the concept of reverence. If we expect that God exists for us, if we expect that God answers every one of our prayers the way that we think he should, and if we expect that God maps out our life the way that we had in mind, then we become the centerpiece of our own spiritual lives.

You can even find books, songs, and probably churches that would feed that idea, but it’s not the picture we have in the Scriptures. Think about the Westminster Catechism. Why do we exist? To glorify God and enjoy him forever. It’s not that he exists to make our lives better, but he does that and so much more.

Laura Story is the author of Stand in Awe: How Reverence Transforms Our Worship and Our Lives.

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