It is, perhaps, one of the hardest struggles of the Christian life to learn this sentence-- "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name be glory."
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of attributing glory to God rather than seeking it for ourselves.
In this quote, Charles Spurgeon reflects on a fundamental struggle within the Christian faith, which is to prioritize God's glory above our own desires or recognition. He highlights the challenge of humility and selflessness, urging believers to acknowledge that all honor and praise should ultimately be directed towards God, not themselves, acknowledging a higher purpose in the Christian journey.
In practice
This quote can be used in a sermon to remind churchgoers of the importance of glorifying God.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Only powerful people have liberty.
One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other.
Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.
The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients.
For you know only a heap of broken images
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.
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