Why God Loves Us: His Glory!

I've just finished reading "The Good God" by Mike Reeves, and it is seriously just amazing, I feel like in subtle ways it has, and will continue to, transform the way I think about who God is and I absolutely one hundred percent, wholeheartedly recommend it to you. It's not just because it's a great book, but because it's such a great God that it describes sooo clearly and succintly and beautifully. I'll maybe write some more about things from it in the future, but in the meantime, having been down to Devon and back to visit my family and driving a fair bit with work too, I have been enjoying some more Mike Reeves talks on my ipod in the car and soaking it all in through my ears as well as my eyes. I'm having one of those amazing periods of just not being able to get enough of it (long may it last!) :D

So I downloaded his "Matters of the Heart" talks from New Word Alive last year a while ago, but don't think I got round to listening to them (don't know where I managed to get it from but I'm pretty sure I didn't pay for them - let me know if you'd like to borrow mine!). Here's a snippet from the first talk: 'How To Enjoy God'. I could sit and listen to this for hours, it feels like eating there's so much weight and truth in everything said and I always come away wanting more of God which seems to me to definitely be a good thing!

So he's talking about what God's glory is:

"Love is the light and glory which are about the throne on which God sits.
...

What Edwards has got in this understanding of glory is that, it's not that you've got the Lord sits on his heavenly throne, as if he was above love, and suddenly went "I know, wouldnt it be fun to be loving today? Why don't we have a crack at that? I'll be generous, I'll see what that's like." No, no, no, that's not how it is at all... no, no, no he is love, his innermost being, his weight, his essence, his glory IS love. He is outgoing, shining out, spreading goodness, generous, overflowing love. 

So what we've got here is not an empty God, all about taking from us, grasping from us. Here is a god so full of life love and goodness that he overflows... 

...what God aims at is not that He may receive, but that He may go forth. The main end, the point of His shining forth is not that He may have His rays reflected back to Himself, but that the rays may go forth! See the difference? It's not that He gives to us in order that He may really ultimately take from us. So it's not that He's gracious to us because what He really wants is to sit around going "I know, I know I'm good aren't I? Come on, lets hear the praise! That's what I was really after." No it's not, it's that he delights IN loving, in giving Himself, he rejoices in that. Which causes his people to praise Him as they enjoy and rejoice in how good He is. 

And that is why Hebrews 1:3 calls Jesus the radiance of God's glory; because Jesus is the radiance of the Father, the shining of the Father's bright glory. And as such, as Jesus goes out from the Father, so He is the glory of God, exactly showing us what the being of the Father is. As he goes out from the Father, to spread his Fathers love."

Perhaps it's just me for whom hearing that was like having a light bulb switched on in my head, I've heard so much about God's GLORY, and how everything in the world is to glorify God, how the chief end of man is to GLORIFY God, and how God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. Which I'm pretty sure are all true, but I think I came away subconciously, for probably the past few years now, imagining God to be needy (though I wouldn't have put it like that), but I have felt obliged to God... like, because He deserves praise, and I love Him, I'd better give it to Him... as though His main aim in having created us, was to make Himself look good. And it's made me a bit resentful I guess, but actually he created us to SHARE with us his love. He really, actually does love us. Because he loves Jesus. He's not 'using' us in some way because He deserves it... No, He really really really LOVES us, Oooooooh it's all so good!

Where my earlier answers to "why does God love us" never seemed to satisfy, knowing now that simply, 'God IS love', is more than sufficient to know that He really, truly does. It's helpful to me thinking in terms of  it being not simply FOR God's glory that He loves us, but rather BECAUSE of it. His glory is His love.

Thank you Mike, and thank you Lord for his teaching! :)