Respond With Praise To The Perfection Of God

Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah … Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them!.
Revelation 12:10,12

Clapping. Cheering. Cries of “Bravo!” All are appropriate responses when an audience enjoys talent displayed at the peak of perfection.

C. S. Lewis offers this intriguing suggestion as to why an eternal chorus of praise for a “performance” that is perfect in every way is such a satisfying activity for the Christian.

WALK WITH C. S. LEWIS
“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.

“If it were possible for a created soul fully to ‘appreciate,’ that is, to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme blessedness.

“To praise God fully we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God, drowned in, dissolved by that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression.

“Our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds.”

WALK CLOSER TO GOD
The quest for perfection. It’s a worthy endeavor for any performer or musician.

And as C. S. Lewis has suggested, the Christian also has a quest: to love God perfectly, to respond with perfect praise to the one who perfectly deserves it—the one who perfectly loves you.

The more you behold him, the more appropriate—and enthusiastic—will be your response, until finally “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

That’s one performance you won’t want to miss!