Live for the Glory of God

We Worship God
A Guide for Worship Leaders:
Praise Builds Up

1 Corinthians 10:23-31 (The Message)
 ^23-24Looking at it one way, you could say, "Anything goes. Because of God's immense generosity and grace, we don't have to dissect and scrutinize every action to see if it will pass muster." But the point is not to just get by. We want to live well, but our foremost efforts should be to help others live well.
 ^25-28With that as a base to work from, common sense can take you the rest of the way. Eat anything sold at the butcher shop, for instance; you don't have to run an "idolatry test" on every item. "The earth," after all, "is God's, and everything in it." That "everything" certainly includes the leg of lamb in the butcher shop. If a nonbeliever invites you to dinner and you feel like going, go ahead and enjoy yourself; eat everything placed before you. It would be both bad manners and bad spirituality to cross-examine your host on the ethical purity of each course as it is served. On the other hand, if he goes out of his way to tell you that this or that was sacrificed to god or goddess so-and-so, you should pass. Even though you may be indifferent as to where it came from, he isn't, and you don't want to send mixed messages to him about who you are worshiping.
 ^29-30But, except for these special cases, I'm not going to walk around on eggshells worrying about what small-minded people might say; I'm going to stride free and easy, knowing what our large-minded Master has already said. If I eat what is served to me, grateful to God for what is on the table, how can I worry about what someone will say? I thanked God for it and he blessed it!
 ^31-33So eat your meals heartily, not worrying about what others say about you—you're eating to God's glory, after all, not to please them. As a matter of fact, do everything that way, heartily and freely to God's glory. At the same time, don't be callous in your exercise of freedom, thoughtlessly stepping on the toes of those who aren't as free as you are. I try my best to be considerate of everyone's feelings in all these matters; I hope you will be, too.

For Reflection
We live in the context of a material world.  Some, with varying degrees of success and failure, have tried to live in isolation -- God centered lives apart from the cultures which surround them.  Look at the violations of the eating rules metaphorically.  When someone offers a racial slur, a Christian does not have to participate in the slur.  When partying with friends, one does not have to get drunk and vulgar.  You have the freedom to engage fully in your culture, with out being seduced by it.  if you reputation is one that indicates you never had a bad word to say about anyone, or that you were one that others could always trust, your ordinary life was lived as a testament to the Glory of God.  Living in the hollow of God's hand transforms your ordinary life into something extraordinary.

Pray
Praise God for His generosity and grace.  Pray that you will have the strength to avoid the seductions of every day life.  Pray that your life will be a testament to the power of the living God.