How to Glorify God in Everyday Life
Most of us move through the day without asking why we do what we do. We answer emails, raise our kids, head to work, and rarely stop to wonder what our lives are ultimately for. If you have ever wanted to know how to glorify God in everyday life, or even what that phrase really means, there is one prayer where Jesus makes it remarkably clear.
In John 17, with His death drawing near, Jesus prayed out loud in front of His disciples. The very first thing He asked for was not safety or comfort. It was glory. Not glory for Himself, but glory for His Father. And hidden inside that prayer is a single question that, if you started asking it, would change how you live.
What Does It Mean to Glorify God?
To glorify God means to bring attention to Him, to His beauty, to His greatness, and to His worth. It is living in such a way that other people look at your life and see something of who God is.
That is exactly how Jesus lived. He pointed people beyond Himself and essentially said, there is God, this is the Father, look at His love, look at His beauty, look at Him. Everything about the way He lived turned people's eyes toward the Father.
Why Did Jesus Say "The Hour Has Come"?
Jesus opens the prayer by lifting His eyes to heaven and saying, "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You." That word, hour, carries real weight, because all through John's Gospel Jesus kept saying the opposite.
At the wedding in John 2, when the wine ran out and His mother came to Him, He answered that His time had not yet come. In John 7, when His brothers told Him to go public and announce that He was the Messiah, He said again that His time had not yet come. In John 7 and John 8, when His words made the religious leaders so angry that they picked up stones, they could not touch Him, because His time had not yet come. He simply walked away.
Timing mattered deeply to Jesus. And now, at last, it was time. He had just finished telling His disciples the last things they needed to hear, ending with the promise in John 16:33, "Take heart, I have overcome the world." Then He turned straight to prayer, and the first words out of His mouth announced that the hour had finally arrived.
What Was Jesus' Purpose in Life?
In these opening verses, Jesus reveals the purpose behind His life, His coming death, His resurrection, and His ascension. All of it was to bring glory to the Father.
Listen to how often He says it. "Glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You." "I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work that You gave Me to do." "Now, Father, glorify Me in Your presence with the glory that I had with You before the world existed." The root word for glory appears five times in five verses. When you see that kind of repetition, it is because He wants you to catch it. There was no doubt in Jesus' mind what His life was ultimately for. It was to bring glory to God, to magnify the Father in the eyes of everyone watching. As He put it, He had done everything the Father asked Him to do.
What Is the Purpose of My Life?
Here is where His prayer reaches out and includes us. Jesus says the Father gave Him authority to give eternal life, and then He defines what that life is: "This is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."
Our purpose is bound up in that one word, know. We were made to know God the Father and His Son. And to truly know God is to want to give glory to the One you know and love. The more deeply you know Him, the more you want to point other people to Him.
How Do You Glorify God in Everyday Life?
This is where it gets practical. What would happen if you sincerely prayed, God, receive glory through my life, let me bring attention to You with everything I do?
Here is a challenge. Before you did anything, what if you asked one question: will this bring glory to God? If it will, do it. If it will not, do not. That one question, asked in the space of a single millisecond, would change everything.
It would change your marriage and the way you relate to the people closest to you. Before you spoke, you would ask whether your words would bring God glory, and if they would not, you simply would not say them. It would change your work. It would change your relationships. It would change your whole life. If you lived for the glory of God instead of for yourself and your own feelings, you would begin to see a God-sized impact in the way you live.
Reflecting the Light You Were Given
Not long ago, Becky, my son, and I were sitting on our back porch, just talking about different things. I was looking up at the sky and noticed a satellite moving across it, a small, steady, white speck. My son asked me how something so small and so far away could shine so brightly.
I told him it was probably reflecting the light of the sun, the same way the moon does. It has no light of its own. It is not like an airplane with blinking lights. It is just a consistent point of light crossing the sky, and every bit of that brightness is borrowed from the sun.
As I thought about that this week, I realized it is a picture of us. On our own, we do not possess anything special. We have no light to give unless it is the light of Jesus shining through us, the glory of God in our lives. Our job is to reflect that light back and bring glory to the One who gave it. We get to show other people how good He is and give Him the glory He deserves.
Where to Go From Here
Jesus began one of the most important prayers of His life by asking that God would be glorified. What if we lived the same way?
You do not have to overhaul everything at once. Start with that single question the next time you face a decision, large or small: will this bring glory to God? Let it shape your words, your work, and your relationships. Like the moon, you were never meant to generate your own light. You were made to reflect His, and in doing so, to show a watching world just how good and beautiful God really is.
