The Magnifying Glass

Magnify = To make greater in size; enlarge.

Psalms 34:3 says, "Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together."

We, as humans, tend to make our problems greater than they are, or, even if they are really large problems, we have a tendency to focus directly on the problem (which in turn makes it larger.) It's like we have a giant microscope and we put our situations, problems, battles right on the glass tray and zoom in as close as we can. We magnify our problems. And the enemy loves this about us. He readily hands us the magnifying lens, because he knows what we usually do with it.

The bible tells us that we should instead MAGNIFY the Lord. Now, there is more than one definition for the word magnify, and given the contextual clues in the verse above, we can gather that by 'magnify' David meant 'to glorify or praise', but for the sake of the metaphor, I would like to focus on the first definition.

If instead of focusing our attention on our problems, there by increasing their size, we focus on the Lord, we will increase His size, His power and His reign in our lives and situations. Magnify the Lord, not our problems. Use the magnifying glass to make God bigger, instead of our problems.

We can make God greater in size, by exalting his name together it says in the psalms. Psalm 69:30 says, "I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving." We can magnify the Lord by praising His name with a song and giving thanks. And maybe this is a stretch (however not entirely unfounded) but Acts 10:46 says, "For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God." We can magnify the Lord by speaking in the Spirit.

It is a choice. We can magnify our problems or we can magnify the Lord. I want to try harder to do the latter.