When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for Him, but He made for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of prioritizing God's glory over our own satisfaction.
In this thought-provoking reflection, Charles Spurgeon warns against the tendency to place our own desires and satisfaction above the glory of God. He argues that when individuals believe they deserve to be content over honoring God, they elevate themselves and diminish the significance of divine majesty, which distorts the true purpose of existence—that we are created for God's glory rather than the other way around.
In practice
In a sermon about living a purpose-driven life.
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.
It's pointless to have a nice clean desk, because it means you're not doing anything.
Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS.
Let evil wait for the day on which it must fall.
Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
On the whole, the longing for solitude is a sign that there still is spirit in a person and is a measure of what spirit there is.
The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge.
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