Soli Deo Gloria
I often hear this latin phrase, especially at tournaments. Translated it means “To God Alone Be Glory.” At face value it is a great slogan, and one that I hope to live up to. But I realized lately that when I am saying “To God Alone Be Glory” most of the time what I really mean is “God please take the credit for my glory.” They may sound like the same thing, but they are very different.
One of the first time in my life when I adopted the phrase Soli Deo Gloria, was when I decided to start debate. For those who don’t know my story in debate, I won’t bore you since it is a bit long. It is enough to say that I joined a week before the Minnesota qualifier and didn’t have any idea what I was doing. So I gave it to God. Whatever you want to do with this situation, Lord. Soli Deo Gloria. I eventually went on to take first in my Region. There was a lot of surprise, a few tears, a ton of nerves, and a blur of activity leading up to the moment when I walked across the stage and took a fancy plaque from Mrs. Hudson’s hands. Anyone who heard that I had started a few months earlier agreed that God had worked through me. For reasons yet unknown to me, God decided to put me up on stage and hand me a first place in Lincoln Douglas. And my heart cried out that this moment was what Soli Deo Gloria truly meant.
Soli Deo Gloria means letting God do amazing things through you and for you. That’s the definition most people use, and it’s accurate. But it’s also an incomplete definition. That’s not all Soli Deo Gloria means.
Last week I learned another definition of Soli Deo Gloria through a painfully embarrassing situation. I was contacting actors to perform in our church’s VBS skits. It was late in the evening, and I had just walked through the door from soccer practice when I heard the phone ring. Answering it, I was excited to hear that my uncle (who happens to be an amazing storyteller) was willing to help me with a skit, but he had heard two different dates and needed to know which one was correct. I told him the date, thanked him profusely, and hung up. As soon as I hung up I realized I had told him the wrong date.
I called back immediately, but it made little difference. He wasn’t available the date that I needed him, and had put the wrong date on his calendar. I knew I had messed up bad. To my shame, I got really tense and snapped at my brother unnecessarily. I was so angry at myself for forgetting such an important, and simple detail that I let myself make many other mistakes that evening. But that night, as I lay in bed, still mentally kicking myself, the words Soli Deo Gloria came back to my mind.
Soli Deo Gloria? That hardly seemed to fit! I had just messed up. I had made a stupid mistake. I was going to have to call our children’s ministry director in the morning and tell her what I had done. I had created hours of work for myself, and possibly for others as well. There wasn’t any glory in this moment!
No, there wasn’t any glory in that moment for me. But as I lay there I realized that I had been mistaking glory for me as the same thing as glory for God. There was no way I could be glorified in this situation. But that didn’t mean God couldn’t be. As the full meaning of Soli Deo Gloria sunk in I prayed, “God, I have no idea if you can be glorified through this. But if my mistakes, and my looking like a fool brings you glory, than it’s worth it.”
I learned that Soli Deo Gloria means that you want God to glorify Himself through whatever means necessary. We often picture those means to be like my experience with debate. Glorious, important, and life changing. But sometimes, they aren’t. Sometimes God is glorified most through our failures. Through our embarrassment, and disappointment, and frustration. But if we turn to Him in those moments He can make even the most disastrous circumstance display His glory.
There is another side to my debate story, a side most people don’t see because it isn’t flashy or impressive, or really all that glorious. I would like to share that side of the story with you because I think it really illustrates what Soli Deo Gloria means. That side of the story is my sister.
While I vowed that I would never do debate, my sister poured her life into it. She lived and breathed evidence, tags, moral obligations, and something called a meta framework (still no idea what that is). She spent hours of work on it, and in the end convinced me to try debate because she seemed to enjoy it so much. She even let me use her case. But after all her hard work, my sister didn’t break at the Minnesota Qualifier. She went 3-3. One of those three rounds she lost, she lost to me.
Anyone in that place has a right to be upset with the older sibling who came out of no where and wrecked their dream. But my sister wasn’t resentful. She gave me a hug and encouraged me, and probably did more to prepare me for Regionals than I did to prepare myself. Of course she was disappointed and frustrated, and a bit angry at times. But through it all she was supportive and loving. She set a clear example of what it means to truly say “may God have the glory” in every situation. Her response to my victory brought far more glory to God than my victory ever did.
God can, and should, be glorified in every situation. But that is only going to happen if we are willing to respond in the way He wants. So as you prepare for this next speech and debate season, as you go about your everyday life, I pray that you would also realize what it truly means for God to be glorified. May we each desire His glory so much that we forget about our own.
Soli Deo Gloria.
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