Newsboys - Greatness Of Our God Lyrics

Video

Newsboys - Greatness Of Our God (Official Lyric Video)

Meaning & Inspiration

"Clear the stage."

Newsboys drop this imperative right in the middle of the chorus, and it hits me with a strange friction. On one hand, it feels like a call to humility—a command to sweep away the ego, the pride, the spotlight-grabbing antics of human nature. It sounds like John the Baptist shouting in the wilderness, telling us to get our pride out of the way so the main act can walk out.

But then I stop. What does it actually mean to clear a stage? In a theater, you clear a stage so the performers can move freely. You make space for the actors to do their work. If I am the one doing the clearing, am I actually surrendering, or am I just tidying up my own house so God has a nice, clean place to perform for me?

There’s a tension here that keeps me up. If God is truly the "Greatness" this song describes—the one who holds the grave down and rules from the dawn of creation—then He doesn’t need me to clear the stage. The stage is His to begin with. The boards, the lights, the audience, the floor—it’s all His. The command sounds bold, but it’s slightly backwards, isn't it? Maybe the real work isn't clearing the stage; maybe it’s realizing there was never a stage for us to stand on in the first place.

I think about the Apostle Paul in Acts 17, telling the Greeks on Mars Hill that God, "the Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples built by human hands." He isn’t waiting for a clean floor to show up. Yet, we insist on this metaphor of performance. We talk about "preparing the way" as if we’re stagehands working for a divine production crew.

It’s easy to dismiss this as a tired lyric cliché. We hear "prepare the way" so often in church that the words stop having edges. They become smooth stones we carry in our pockets without looking at them. But if you hold that phrase up to the light, it burns a little. It forces you to ask: What exactly is sitting on that stage right now that needs to be hauled off? For me, it’s usually my own sense of autonomy—my desperate, clawing need to be the protagonist of my own story.

The song moves from this stage-management imagery to the internal: "He lives within us." That’s the real shift. If He is inside, then the stage isn't a location or an event. The "clearing" isn't a one-time prep for a Sunday morning show. It’s the daily, messy, exhausting work of clearing out the clutter in the mind so that the "greatness" mentioned isn't just a choir anthem, but a lived reality.

I’m left wondering if the "clear the stage" line is a plea for God to come in and wreck the set, to dismantle the furniture I’ve spent my life arranging, so that finally, there’s nothing left to do but watch Him be God. It’s less of a command for me to act, and more of a prayer for Him to move.