Why Your Chief End Is To Glorify God And Enjoy Him Forever (WSC 1)

Start the year by aiming at what matters most. We explore the opening line of the Westminster Shorter Catechism—“to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever”—and turn it from a memorized phrase into a lived way of seeing time, work, and desire. With 1 Corinthians 10:31 as our grounding, we unpack how ordinary moments like eating, resting, and doing our jobs can be offered as worship, and we push back on the myth that joy depends on comfort or prosperity.

I share four simple practices for shaping a God-centered year: set your intention to glorify God in every place, acknowledge His gifts rather than hoard credit, trade inferior ends for the ultimate end, and learn to enjoy God even when life hurts. Along the way we revisit the often-misread Puritans, draw on J. I. Packer and Edward T. Welch to reframe worry, and consider why salvation is first about the display of God’s glory before it is about our escape from guilt. Psalm 73 helps us see that when flesh and heart fail, God remains our portion; Psalm 84 steadies us with the promise that He is both sun and shield.

 Listen to reorient your goals and recover the  freedom of living for God’s honor and your joy in Him. If this encouraged you, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the conversation.

Transcript

Scripture Ground: 1 Corinthians 10:31

Resolutions, Purpose, And The End In Mind

Enjoyment And The Puritans Reconsidered

Conversion, Relationship, And True Glory

Principle One: Intend To Glorify God

Against Prosperity Myths

What It Means To Glorify God

Principle Two: Acknowledge God’s Gifts

Principle Three: Ultimate Over Inferior Ends

Knowing God Reorders Our Worries

Salvation And The Glory Of God

Desire And Delight: Psalm 73

Principle Four: Joy Despite Hard Times

True Happiness In Enjoying God

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to Catechizing Conversations. My name is Sisko Victor, and I'm glad that you have joined me today for this podcast as we begin in this new year of twenty twenty six walking through the Westminster Shorter Catechism together. Westminster Shorter Catechism number one. What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. One of the verses that is attached to that answer is First Corinthians 10 31, which says, Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. And this truly is a great question and answer to consider as we begin a new year. I know the new year is a time that people make resolutions, people make new goals. Perhaps we are reflecting on the previous year and considering how we're going to move forward in this year. But at the very heart of this question is the question, what is our purpose? Why do we exist? What does a person mainly and principally intend to be his chief end? I remember as a young man reading a book by a leadership guru named Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And one of those habits that Covey suggests is that effective person envisions what the goal is in the end. And then the plan to work to get there. The idea is you identify your target. One of the illustrations, I think, in his book was that we should envision our funeral. What would we want people to say about us? How would we want to be eulogized? What would be on our gravestone if we were described in our life? Begin with the end in mind. Well, shorter catechism question one and its answer is more than providing a leadership principle. But it's asking what should drive all my undertakings? And the answer is that God would be glorified and that I would enjoy God. It is a surprise to me and maybe to many that it was the Puritans that wrote this first question and answer, the shorter shorter catechism. Often we have a idea of Puritans to be these mean-spirited, frowning, tall black hat, black clothes kind of men who didn't want anyone to have any enjoyment. And yet they're saying man's chief end is enjoyment. It's enjoyment of God by glorifying him. And truly, we cannot enjoy life, nor can we enjoy one another truly and authentically if we're out of relationship with God. And so it's impossible for an unbeliever, a person who has not come to Christ, to truly glorify God. Now, God can be glorified by means of anything. But the heart of an unbeliever is not intended to glorify God. And so to truly glorify God and to enjoy Him, one first must come into relationship with Him, which only comes by way of faith and trust in Christ alone. And so if you're a believer today, how should we enter this year and how should we seek to align ourselves with Westminster Shore Catechism One? That we look at our lives as being intended to glorify God and in the midst of life to enjoy Him as we do so. Well, a few principles here. Number one, set your mind that your intention is to glorify God, wherever you are, and whatever you are doing. The beautiful thing about 1 Corinthians 10 31 is it's saying whatever you do, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do. And so each of us can ask a question: in what ways could God be honored in this area of my life? In what ways could God be honored by what's going on in my life right now? Well, there's so much truth in 1 Corinthians 10 31. I think one of the things it does is it really pushes back against any health and wealth gospel, because if you can glorify God in all that you do, wherever you are in life, then it's certainly not saying that you can only glorify God if things are going well. Certainly not saying that. Or if you're wealthy, or if your children are all obedient, or if your marriage is perfect. No, it's saying that in whatever we do, as long as it's godly, and as long as it's not evil in what we're doing, God can be glorified. He can even be glorified by the very difficult and trying times of life when things are not going well. And so set your mind that your intention, child of God, is to glorify God wherever you are and in the midst of whatever you're doing. What does it mean to glorify God? John Thompson's book on the sort of catechism says the glory of a person is his dignity and excellency. When it is made visible to others, Joseph was made glorious in Egypt by being advanced by Pharr to great honor and authority. He goes on to say, a person may be glorified two ways, either first, when he has advanced unto more honor and glory than he had before, like Joseph, as he was exalted, or as the saints, when they eventually will be glorified in heaven, they'll be advanced, or as Christ, who as a man was glorified at the Father's right hand. But secondly, a glory comes when a person's glory and excellency is acknowledged, manifested, and declared to others. Now, the first way God cannot be glorified as God by envious creatures because his glory and excellency is infinite. He doesn't advance in glory or progress in glory. In that sense, his glory cannot be increased. But we can glorify God by acknowledging who he is, by acknowledging his wisdom and his power, the one who has made us. Psalms 19:1, a very familiar verse. The heavens are said to glorify God and the skies preach his handiworks. And so in that sense, we can glorify God. We point to him, we acknowledge him, we recognize him. And if the heavens declare the glory of God, then certainly all of creation, the littlest fly, the dust, the atom, glorifies God. We too can acknowledge the wisdom and power and goodness of our Maker. And in that sense, glorify God. Set your mind that your intention this year is to glorify Him, wherever you are, whatever you're doing. Number two, acknowledge the wisdom and power of God who made you, who gifted you. Again, referencing Psalm 19.1, the heavens declare the glory of God. What has God blessed you with? What has He gifted you with? Instead of taking that glory for yourself, instead of considering that you by your strong hand or wisdom or might have gotten you to where you are. Glorify God. Recognize that without his doing what what you've seen done in your life, without his intervention, without his gifting, without his waking you up in the morning, where would you be today? Acknowledge the wisdom and power of God who made you and gifted you. Thirdly, take your eyes off the inferior end and look to the ultimate end to glorify God. Now, what do we mean by this? Take your eyes off the inferior end and look to the ultimate end. It's easy for us as men, as women, to get lost in the details. It's easy for us to get so consumed by worry or by problems, by the minute details of life, by the noise, by the verbal graffiti, that we lose sight of the end purpose. And so if we are to glorify God, we have to take our eyes off the inferior end and look to the ultimate end. What is man's chief end? Not his first step, not his second step, not midway, not three-quarters of the way. What's the chief end? What's the ultimate end is to glorify God? So if I am so consumed by the problems, by the troubles of life or this world in which I live, how can I truly glorify God? was the great author and minister J.I. Packer, who said, Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord. What a powerful statement. Once you and I become aware that the main business that we are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord. I'd love to ask J.I. Packer to expound upon that, but I can get a sense of what he is saying there. That if my eyes are so consumed by my problems and by the world's problems and by the minutiae of life, I'm losing sight of why I'm on this earth, why God has put breath in my lungs. It's to know him. This is eternal life. To know God and to know the one he has sent, his son Christ. What a beautiful statement. The famed counselor Edward T. Welch said, one of the strategies for dealing with worry is to be overtaken by something more important than the object of your worries. Another statement filled with gold here by Mr. Welch. Ah, so many worries, so many problems, so many troubles, and these often are the inferior ends. These are the things that would consume our time and our minds. And yet a strategy to dealing with all of that is to be overtaken by something much more important than the object of our worries. And if our minds and our eyes and our hearts are set upon the glory of God, then we will not allow the troubles and anxieties of this world to weigh us down. We have something greater to pursue and a greater cause, a greater goal. Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. We must consider that we were originally created that we may glorify God. That's what the catechism is saying. Sin is what has destroyed this. Sin ultimately is a failure to glorify God. Thus, when we think of salvation, the late great Martin Lloyd Jones said, we must not think of it in the first instance in terms of our deliverance from particular sins or even from condemnation. It includes that, of course. But the chief thing about salvation is that the glory of God has been revealed to us through salvation, the glory of his love, the glory of his grace has embraced us where we were. And so Jones exhorts us to think about salvation primarily in terms of the glory of God. How often we don't, however, how often we think of salvation just as getting out of hell free card or the forgiveness of my iniquities, or my deliverance from bondage and slavery. Yes, to all those things. But ultimately, God saved us for his own glory. Let us think of salvation in that way. Now there's another passage in addition to the Corinthian passage, in terms of the glory of God, that's often attached to the first answer of the shorter catechism, and that's Psalm 73, 25. Psalm 73, 25, and 26. Psalm 73, 25, and 26 says, Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. What a beautiful psalm. Either in heaven or on earth, who do I have? Reminds me of Peter. He said, Where are we going to go? Lord, you are the one that has the words of eternal life. Where can I turn? What does it mean to enjoy God, but to come to this realization that ultimately He is our all-in-all? That all of the other desires, and God does give us other desires that are good and right, but they are secondary. They fall so short of what our heart truly aches for and longs for, and that is a relationship with our Maker, the Creator of heaven and earth, the one who we are made in his image. My flesh and my heart may fail. Again, everything may not be going right in 2026, everything may not have been going right in 2025. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. The living God is the highest desire a human being can know. And so going back to those points, number one, set your mind that your intention is to glorify God wherever you are and whatever you're doing. Two, acknowledge the wisdom and power of God who made you and gifted you. Three, take your eyes off the inferior end and look to the ultimate end, which is to glorify God. And lastly, you can glorify and enjoy God despite the circumstances of your life. My heart and my flesh may fail. But a person who knows the Lord, that is a converted person, may glorify God. And may bring others in to give occasion to glorify God. A true believer, a person who's been converted, acts from a true principle of grace, true faith, sincere love, and godly fear. And so a true believer, though his heart may fail, though he may be surrounded by difficulty, God can still be glorified. And God can still be enjoyed in the midst of that difficulty. Isn't that a beautiful thing? Because God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever, even as the flesh is failing. Our own happiness is tied up in enjoying God. In fact, true happiness consists in one enjoying God. This is the secret that the world doesn't know, do they? Man will spend his life searching and longing and looking and aching without a satisfaction. But the believer will know true satisfaction. The believer has living water of enjoyment. And Jesus said, Will never thirst again. Speaking of a spiritual quenching of that spiritual thirst. And so true happiness consists in one enjoying God. And our own happiness is tied up in enjoying Him. And so, no, you can glorify God and enjoy Him despite the encounters or the circumstances of your life that are negative at this time. The Lord is faithful to keep you. In closing, Psalm 84, verse 11 through 12 says this for the Lord God is a son and shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you. Yet another reinforcement that God can be enjoyed even when there is failure. This is our chief end. This is what we are to seek and aim for and desire. And that our happiness will be tied up as God is glorified. This is our duty in enjoying Him and having that connection, that relationship with Him, and knowing that He will give grace and glory and will withhold no good thing from those who walk uprightly.