Shades of Glory: Exploring the Degrees of Brightness in God's Glory • Deshen Daily

God’s Presence is forcefully making its grand entrance into the earth in ways that have never been seen before. His glory is filling the earth.

But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD. (Numbers 14:21 KJV)

God’s Presence: A Grand Entrance of Glory on Earth

There are different degrees of brightness of light shining around us. The brightness of the sun varies during the course of the day. Even electrical light bulbs around us vary in their degrees of brightness. Light is one of the principal manifestations of the glory of the Lord on the earth. His glory shines!

Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. (Lue. 2:9 HCSB)

The Lord describes us as the lights of the world. His glory shines forth from within us,

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD shines over you. (Isaiah. 60:1 HCSB)

The Bible vividly describes this phenomena using the life of a believer,

The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until midday. (Proverbs 4:18 HCSB)

Shades of Glory: Varying Degrees of Brightness

As there are different degrees of brightness of light, there are different shades of His glory. After we get born again into the Kingdom of light and glory, we began our walk towards the perfect glory. At every instant of our lives, we living in a degree of glory.

The degree of manifestation of the attributes of God in our life at every instant is the degree of glory you are living in. I develop a hypothetical scale from 0 to 100% to help us in our comprehension-0% is absence of divine expression and 100% is all of God Himself, the fullness of Christlikeness within us. When Christ returns, the perfect glory of the Lord will shine forth through our spiritual bodies. This is 100%. While still on this earth, we are at different levels of glory. We should always think about to what degree we express His nature within us? His love, wisdom, power, kindness?

And believers on the earth today differ in the degree in which they are shining,

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. (1 Corinthians. 15:41 New American Standard)

To more we allow His Spirit lead our lives, the greater we will shine. We do not differ in glory because Christ within us is different. It is because we have chosen to yield differently to the control and leadership of His Spirit

Shades of Glory: Different Levels of Manifestation

As believers mature in the faith, the degree of brightness increases from one level to another. It is aptly described in this text

The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until midday. (Proverbs 4:18 HCSB)

The life of the believer is constantly changing from one bright, to brighter to brighter to brighter and …. We are constantly moving from one shade of glory to the other. Imaging for a second a new star being born in our galaxy caught on tape that gets brighter and brighter. That will describe our lives from glory to glory. This is God’s design and plan for His people. You may not attain 100% while on earth. That is not the point. He is most interested in your glory transformation daily. From one shade of glory to another as the perfect day draws new.

Midday as described above is 100%. It is the perfect glory, the fullness of Christ revealed in us. And as we approach that day, we glow in increasing measure.

The Holy Spirit is the One that produces the glory transformation in us,

We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18 HCSB)

As we yield to His moulding hands, He transforms us to become more and more like Christ each day. Think of red coals on fire. As the bellows blow upon it, the flames flare up. With each blasts of air, the fire heats up! With each touch of His Spirit, we glow brighter!!

We are fast approaching midday!

You may expressing God’s power now to some degree. That is the shade of glory in that respect you are in. And there are greater shades of brightness above that. You may be shining, but there are greater shades above where you are. God wants you to continue to move towards midday. You may be at the brightness of 6am now, move to 7am, then to 8am and keep moving forward until midday!