One final thought on building your foundation, or creating a biblical basis for your music and worship ministry. Psalm 150:2 says, Praise him [God] for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness (NIV). The King James Version renders the 2nd half of this verse: praise him according to his excellent greatness.
We know that when we read in scripture the phrase, “according to,” it usually means in relation to, or out of, or in proportion to. That seems to indicate a percentage, a fraction, or an apportionment. It's a designated response according to the sum total. Does that make sense at all?
Another way of looking at it is this: imagine you could graph the “excellent greatness” of God. Suppose you could draw a dot on a whiteboard that represents the beginning of God's excellent greatness. Now think of drawing a line out to the right that would continue until you reached the symbolic point of where this excellent greatness would end. Where would you stop the line?
Exactly! There would be no end. The line would be infinite. So, how do we determine our proportion of praise that we are to give God “according to his excellent greatness?” Did you happen to read Part 9 of these Building Your Foundation blog posts? Jesus responded to the question about the greatest commandment by saying we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and everythingness. The proportion or percentage of worship we owe God according to his excellent greatness, is everything that's in us.
Jesus understood that a worshipful response to God isn't a once a week, only-in-this-place-and-at-this-time exercise. He knew that it's a moment-by-moment, totally surrendered way of living. He knew that an infinite God is worthy of unending praise.
May that always be the defining characteristic of your life, and of mine.