Stealing from God's glory? I wanted to be famous for God.

In 1989, I went off to college at Liberty University to become a young champion for Christ. What I didn’t realize then that I realize now as a 54-year-old man is that my ambition may have been more selfish than noble. My goal was more misguided than godly. Truth be told, I wanted to be great for God for my own sake. I didn’t really want to magnify God’s greatness to the world.

I recently began this new Bible reading plan and came across Genesis 11:

“Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.’ And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.’ So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.”

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Toward the beginning of time, humanity wanted to make a name for itself. If the truth be told, when I went off to college, I wanted to make a name for myself. I wanted to be famous for God. But did I want God to be famous in me?

Certainly, there are worse things to be famous for. But I have learned along the way that my desire to make a name for myself is futile, vain, and unproductive to the advancement of God’s Kingdom on earth. In Genesis 11, we see God sending a spirit of confusion over their lives so that they were dispersed and unable to do what they wanted to do. They wanted to make a name for themselves.

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