New City CatechismSample

Question: How can we glorify God?

Answer: We glorify God by enjoying him, loving him, trusting him, and by obeying his will, commands, and law.

Commentary: The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God. We should neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, but eat to God, and sleep to God, and work to God, and talk to God, do all to his glory and praise…. As we receive all from God, so we should lay all at his feet, and say, ‘I will not live in a course of sin that will not stand with the favour of my God’….

We glorify God when we exalt him in our souls above all creatures in the world, when we give him the highest place in our love and in our joy, when all our affections are set upon him as the greatest good. This is seen also by opposition, when we will not offend God for any creature, when we can ask our affections, "Whom have I in heaven but thee?".

God is our God by covenant, because he hath made over himself unto us. Every believing Christian hath the title passed over to him, so that God is his portion, and his inheritance. There is more comfort in this, that God is our God, than the heart of man can conceive. It is larger than his heart, and therefore though we cannot say, that riches, or honours, or friends, &c, are ours, yet if we be able to say by the Spirit of faith that God is ours, then we have all in him.

His wisdom is ours to find out a way to do us good;…if under the guilt of sin, his mercy is ours to forgive us; if any want, his all-sufficiency is ours to supply, or to make it good. If God be ours, then whatsoever God can do is ours, and whatsoever God hath is ours…. God will have us make his glory our aim, that he may bestow himself upon us.