Faithfulness=Excellence

I think we tend to devalue the idea of excellence because we feel we can't attain so we will just settle on "trying our best." It is good to strive to do the best we can in our worship, it isn't good if we just stop there then we aren't really giving God our best. We are only working until we meet a standard that we are content with. But it is not our standard we need to meet. It is God's standard we must strive to, and that is a standard of excellence. 

We see the greatest example of "worship excellence" in Jesus Christ. In Colossians 1:19, it says, "For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell." In Jesus, excellence was found. Jesus embodied everything that pleased God. Through Him, excellence came out of the presence of God. Excellence must always point back to the glory of God.

I think God created us for excellence. Romans 3:23 says, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." What have we fallen short of? We have just missed the mark for excellence. God made us to long to be in His glory. We long for what we have fallen short of. Excellence can be defined as an attitude committed to presenting the best of one's gifts to God for His glory. So when we strive to give God the best, according to His standards, we are growing closer to excellence. 

In Luke 16:10-12 we see three principles of excellence. We learn that if you are faithful with a little thing, God will give you much. If you are faithful with riches, God will give you true riches. If you are faithful with that which belongs to someone else, God will give you your own. Through these principles, we see that in order to attain excellence we must be faithful with whatever circumstances we are in. The key to excellence in worship is faithfulness.