All believers long to experience God’s glory. At least we would say we do. But to what lengths will we go to receive all He has for us?
Pastor Todd Smith has been discussing the glory of God on the Kingdom Ready podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. In a recent episode, He is joined by his wife, Pastor Karen Smith. She says our part in receiving God’s glory is not “works or any deeds you have to perform. … [God] says, ‘Are you willing to allow Me to cut off some things in your life or to expose some things in your life so that you can draw closer to Me?’
Todd has firsthand experience with this during the North Georgia revival, and he shares what happened. “I’m at the altar. The glory of God has come into our building … I’m praying in the sanctuary, and I’m the dark, and I make the statement, ‘God, I will do whatever You ask me to do, and I will pay whatever price you want me to pay, to encounter You and to experience more of Your glory.
“And immediately He spoke to me, and He says, ‘Todd, there are people, your past elder, whom you have hurt. And I need you to make that right now, here.’ And I wasn’t expecting that at all. I wasn’t anticipating God to say anything like that. But it was like if he would have said that to me in the very beginning, I would have run from it.”
But, Todd says, God waited until his heart was ready. “And He with precision tapped on that area of my heart at the right moment, when I was willing to do whatever He asked me to do.
“And as a result of that, I submitted and said, ‘God, I will do it. I will go to these men that I offended and I hurt, and I will ask them to forgive me,'” he says. “Now that was tough, very difficult for me to do; my flesh fought against it. But I pressed in, and every time I asked the individual to forgive me, the glory of God went to the next level in my life. And the glory inside of our church also went to the next level.
“So the glory of God is dependent upon … the leaders in the churches, the leaders of those churches and the church members of how pure we can become with God’s grace and mercy working in our lives. The purer we are, the more sanctified we are, the greater the glory,” Todd says.
To hear more about God’s glory and how He works to reveal it, click here to listen to the entire podcast. {eoa}
