Isaiah 43:7
Bring all who claim me as their God, for I have made them for my glory. It was I who created them.’”
What does it mean that God has "made us for His glory"?
Psalm 19 tells us, "The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day, they continue to speak; night after night, they make him known. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world."
There can be no doubt that God has made us, just as there is no doubt that He made the heavens and the earth. It is only a complete fool who, looking at the intricacies of creation, says "there is no God". Anyone who objectively observes nature concludes that it is not random, but created.
Study the mechanism of something as simple as breathing, where Oxygen is inhaled into the lungs, diffuses across the alveoli into the pulmonary capillaries, binds to hemoglobin in red blood cells, is pumped by the heart through arteries and systemic capillaries to tissues where it diffuses into cells, and the now deoxygenated, carbon‑dioxide–rich blood returns via veins to the right heart and then back to the lungs to repeat the cycle. You will see that at the very base level of who you are, there is a design and a purpose.
Because we are made, what does it mean that we are made for His glory?
Does not the potter have the power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? One vessel's purpose may be that of a trash can while another’s may be that of an ornament on a mantle. Regardless, it is the potter who has the power over the clay. It is He who, in forming us, assigns a use and purpose, and it is His right, as the potter, to hold us to that design. If a potter deems that a vessel is unable or unwilling to carry out the purpose for which it is designed, is it not His right to cast that vessel aside, breaking it into pieces and starting the process over?
While the decision to form us from the dust was God's alone, in that we were not consulted before we were born, the fulfillment of the design and purpose does, in some part, require our involvement. To carry out our design, we must first know what the design is, and then we must strive forward, doing our part to live up to that purpose.
The heavens do it! The skies and the stars and the trees and the birds and the fish, though they have no voice, speak day and night. Though they produce no sound, their testimony goes out throughout the entire earth. Without the ability to choose, they are free to carry out their purpose without thought or consideration.
A tree is a tree every day. It stands, with arms stretched wide, offering itself as a home to the birds, taking in carbon dioxide and supplying oxygen in return, providing shade and beauty to all who behold it to the glory of its Creator, never once stopping to question its design. At no point does a tree self-reflect. You will never find a tree that is unsatisfied in its tree-ness.
Humans are the only created object that have a choice in whether or not to forsake the purpose for which they were designed, and I say that most do.
Though created in the same way as a tree, we harbor within us a sin nature that causes us to rebel against our design and designer. We are not content with the way we look, constantly pointing to a branch that is off-center here or a clump of leaves that should be fuller there... Though we sense a clear and innate purpose deriving from the very cells that make us up, we convince ourselves to read books written by humans and travel to far-off cultures in order to determine for ourselves what "meaning" means.
We spend our time, not in harmony and dignified submission, but instead thrashing and raging against God and nature. We inject our skin with foreign material in defiance of time and the wrinkles it produces. We take a knife to the portions of our bodies that we view as disproportionate. We hide our smiles, change our voices, and stifle our inclinations in order that we not be seen and judged, and in doing so, contravent.
Go today to a nursing home. Go to those who have lived life and are at the end and ask them for advice...
Ask them if you should get the Botox or the rhinoplasty. Ask them if you should take the job that offers you the most money rather than follow the passion God placed in your heart. Ask them if you should "play it safe"...
You already know what they will say. They will grab you by the hand and, with pleading in their voice and tears in their eyes, they will implore you to live! Today!
They will explain that life is short and that, before you can blink, it will be over! They will tell you that all the time spent wishing you were something else and comparing yourself to others will turn out to be a complete waste. They will tell you that you have a purpose and that the only thing that will fulfill you, the only thing that will matter as you lie on your deathbed, will be whether or not you lived out that purpose.
If they are wise, they will tell you what your purpose is... which is to glorify God.
So...how?
First, you must recognize God for who He is, namely that He is God, and that He, not you, is who determines your purpose. For the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Second, you must do things His way. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me." Jesus is the "narrow gate". He stands as the entrance to the path, and anyone who wishes to walk it must enter through Him. This "narrow gate" is so narrow that it appears to be the exact dimensions of your body. It appears as a cut-out of your silhouette. If you are to enter through it, you must drop everything. You must shed every ornament. You may carry no personal effects.
Last, you must reckon your old life, and way of thinking, and living, as dead, buried with Christ. “For anyone who puts a hand to the plow and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.”
Some are like trees, others like birds, still some like a fish, or a bear, or the moon...
The way in which these things glorify God is in all ways different and yet in all ways the same...
God created you in the same manner, at the same time, having a calling which is unique to you and universal to all of creation. You will go and do things that have never been done, speak in ways never heard, and love in a way that only you can love... only if you are willing to submit yourself to the system God has designed rather than trying to design a new one yourself.
I can not tell you what you will do or where you will go...
I can only point you to the gate where the path starts.