You were created for God. Do you sometimes act as if God was created for you?

Isaiah 43:6b-7

Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.

Created for God’s Glory

If the heavens declare God’s glory (Psalm 19:1), surely we should do the same, right? Whoever was created was created for a purpose, too. For God and by God, everything was created to bring Him glory (Rom. 11:36), so that necessarily means us since we, too, were part of His creation. God created you for His glory but He created you for Himself, too! I ask myself, since God created everything for His glory and I was no accident but created for Him, too, why do I sometimes act like He was created for me? What I mean by that is why do I sometimes treat God as my “cosmic genie” who is supposed to answer all my wishes (in prayer) and is supposed to make me happy, no matter what. That is my nature. What about you? Am I alone in this? I realize that God was not a created being–I was–but sometimes in the way that I pray to Him or talk to Him, that’s the way it comes out. God, forgive me for such presumptuousness.

My Created God

I am His. He is not really mine, at least in the sense that I was created for Him to glorify Him and not for Him to satisfy my needs. Paul told the Greeks in Athens that it is in God that “we live and move and have our being” because “we are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:28). My heart is an idol factory, and before I was saved, I had created a god in my own image and my own likeness, but that was not the One, True God. That was a god of my own imagination. I had created a god that was not real. Until the Spirit of God opened my eyes, I hadn’t really seen Who God was. I later came to realize, through God’s Spirit, that I was created for Him and His purpose, not the other way around. Some false cults have made their own gods, and, sadly, many are deceived. They teach about a Jesus but not the real Jesus, and unless you have the real Jesus, you don’t have the real Savior. Do you know what I mean?

Created in God’s Image

God created mankind in His own image and after His own likeness (Gen. 1:27), not the other way around. To be in His image and in His own likeness for the believer is to seek to be in the image of Christ and to be like Him. By this, others can be drawn to Him and seek to know Him. That’s why He is to be praised, because He is their Creator, too (Psalm 148:5). Just as He commands the earth to go where it is to go (Psalm 147:15) and to stay in its proper place (Psalm 33:9), so we too should go where He commands us to go (Matt. 28:19-20; Acts 1:8) and abide where He tells us to abide (John 15:4).

A Closing Prayer

Father, forgive me for creating my own god, which is really no god at all but one of my own making. Help me to never take Your greatness for granted. You created me for Your own glory, and I fail miserably at that so often. Thank You for Your patience with me, and I pray for Your Son’s name to be glorified. In His great name I pray.

Amen