After establishing enduring faith and enduring love, we must have an enduring vision if we are going to stay on the path to the fulfillment of our purpose. For us to have a vision that endures, it must be the vision to which God has called us. How do we know the vision is something to which God has called us?
First, it should be the deepest desire of our hearts. The Lord created each one of us with a purpose before the foundation of the world. He put that purpose in our hearts, and there is nothing else that will be completely fulfilling to us until we are fulfilling that purpose. Living waters come from our innermost beings. The deepest desire of our hearts is what we have been called to.
Of course, because of sin and wickedness, or subjection to religious and control spirits that instill insecurities and/or rebellion, many have a hard time discerning what is the deepest desire of their hearts. The primary way He strips away the veils that cloud our vision is by revealing His glory to us. Man was made in His image, and when we see Him and behold His glory, it calls to the deepest desire of our beings and what we were created to be.
The glory of the Lord is not just a lot of brilliant colors, but it is His character revealed through His actions. That is what we read concerning His first miracle in John 2:11, "This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him." As we behold the works of God, we can discern His ways and His nature. In them we see His mercy, His grace, His love, and sometimes His righteous judgment. We can also see His glory in nature, as the Lord stated even Solomon in all of his glory did not clothe himself as well as the Lord did the lilies of the field (see Matthew 6:28-29).
As we behold His glory in these ways, it strips away the veils that cover our true hearts and changes us so we become like Him. It is also our calling that determines the primary way we see Him. If you are called as a pastor you will see the shepherding of Jesus in everything He does. If you are called as a teacher you will see the glory of His teaching in everything He does. If you are called as an evangelist you will see all of His teaching and works as an evangelistic call. If you are a prophet you may see the glory of prophetic revelation in them.
Of course, the one event that reveals His glory and nature more than any other is the cross. He is eternally called "the Lamb" because we will forever be seeing His glory and love in the cross. This glory of the cross is revealed in increasing layers and depth that we will not exhaust for all of eternity. Billions of years from now we will still be in awe of the cross. As we now behold the love revealed through the cross, we are compelled to become like Him, taking up our own crosses daily to give our lives to the sacrifice of service to others. As we do this He is able to trust us with more and more of His power which further reveals His glory and ways.
To become who we were created to be, we should always be looking for His glory in everything. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning once said, "Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes—the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries." How different would our lives be if we could see?
Again, our primary goal in life should be to see His glory in everything. This is not an easy task, which is why, as a new believer I was stunned when I first read Isaiah 6:1-3:
In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne,
lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings; with two he covered his face,
and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
And one called out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts,
the whole earth is full of His glory."
My problem with this was how the seraphim could say that the whole earth was full of His glory. I thought of all of the wars, hatred, child abuse, racism, disease, etc., and honestly thought this was a mistranslation. Then one day I felt the Lord speak to me and say that the reason why the seraphim saw the whole world full of His glory was because they dwell in His presence, and if I would dwell in His presence, I too would see His glory in everything. I would not just see the present conditions, but I would see His plan for redeeming them and restoring the glory that He always intended to fill the earth. This put me on the path for the necessary change in my life that would be required if I was to serve in His presence.
If we are going to walk the path that reveals His glory, carrying and demonstrating the glory of His ways, His redemption, and His ultimate plan for mankind, we must start to behold His glory so that we are changed into a demonstration of it. That is your ultimate calling—to reveal the glory of the Lord.