A Devotion from Thomas Boston

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.—1 Corinthians 10:31

Regard for the glory of God is as salt that must be served up with every dish.   The great work of our lives is to glorify him.

This must be the purpose of our natural actions (1 Cor. 10:31), eating, sleeping, walking, and the like. We are under a law as to these things. We may not eat and drink as we please, any more than pray as we please. All must be done in subordination to God, that we may live and, living, may glorify God.

This must be the purpose of our civil actions, our work, buying and selling, and so on (Eph. 6:7). One of the sins of the old world was that they were eating (Matt. 24:38); the word is properly used of beasts eating their food—they had no higher purpose in it than beasts; and in marrying, no eye to God.

This must be the purpose of our moral and religious actions (Zech. 7:5). We must pray, fast, and the like, for God’s glory. This is such a necessary ingredient in our actions that none of them are truly good and acceptable to God without it. Do what we will, it cannot be pleasing service to God if we do not make him our purpose. We should always design to glorify God. And that is done

•     when the course of our lives is directed to the glory of God;

•     when we live according to God’s Word, taking heed that we swerve not in anything from it;

•     when God’s will is the reason as well as the rule of our actions—when we believe a truth because God has said it and do a duty because God has commanded it.

If we do not so, God loses his glory, and we lose our labor.

God is the fountain of our being, and seeing we are of him, we should be to him (Rom. 11:36). God is our creator, preserver, and benefactor. Your being or mine is only a borrowed being from him. Whatever perfection we have is from him, and it is at his cost that we live. As when the waters come from the sea to the earth and go back again by brooks and rivers, so all that we receive and enjoy comes from God and ought to go back to him by being used for his glory. To make ourselves our chief purpose is to make ourselves a god to ourselves; for a creature to be a center to itself and God a means to that end is to blaspheme.