Praise Him for His mighty deeds, praise Him according to His excellent greatness. (Psalm 150:2)
Several years back, I led a chapel at the Intentional Living Center, and we focused on the above verse from Psalm 150. This verse focuses on two things: Praise Him for His mighty deeds—WHAT God does; and Praise Him according to His excellent greatness— WHO God is.
We started with WHAT God does first. It’s relatively easy to recite the works of God, either those you have seen for yourself, or have heard about from others, or have seen in Scripture. And whether you know it or not, we have all been recipients of mighty deeds. As such, we were able to fill up an entire side of whiteboard in a short time.
But when I flipped the whiteboard and asked them to recount WHO He is, it took significantly longer, and we came up with maybe only a third the number of examples.
Why was that? Many of the works of God are tangible; they can be seen, touched, heard, tasted and smelled. His attributes however may not fall within the physical realm, and require a bit more study on our part. The good news is His acts are entirely consistent with His nature; so if you have to start with WHAT He has done in your life—if you look—you will find a divine attribute behind that act.
Mighty deeds – most often, this Hebrew word is translated as power or strength, and what we can learn from its various definitions is, God’s power not only proclaims who He is, but what He has done. And when He empowers us, it reveals who He is, and what He has done—in us:
I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13)
Excellent in excellent greatness is most often translated as abundance, and can also be translated as greatness; so verse two could say: Praise Him according to His great greatness. But the psalmist was seeking to convey a “better” superlative; sort of a super superlative. That makes sense when you’re talking about the Lord. Language tends to fail us when we describe Him. Which only points us back to my introductory post: Be still and know that I am God.
Get caught up in WHAT He has done… This Is My Father’s World by GLAD