Each day as we awake we are faced with the same question. Unaware that we are faced with it, we go about getting dressed as usual. We start with a shower, putting on a cup of coffee, grabbing a bite to eat. Little do we know that we are going to magnify something today. It’s just going to happen. You don’t have to plan it out.
Someone calls on the phone and begins to tell us something that happened yesterday. As we hear this piece of news we naturally start to dissect the information. Where did it happen? Why did they do that? What is it going to profit? And then, who all was involved?
Each piece of information that goes through our mind gets put under a microscope. We have the need to dissect the data in order to understand it properly. After understanding it, we are faced with a discussion of, “What are we going to do with the information now?
Many people will only dissect it themselves but there are others who will call someone else and magnify the information to them. In turn the next person will do the same thing, properly dissecting it in their mind and passing along the knowledge. Each of us dissect data differently thus by the time the story comes back around to the actual person that it was about, it isn’t even recognizable. Have you ever heard anyone make the statement, “She blows everything way out of proportion?” Meaning, she makes everything seem big. I’m sure we all have been guilty at one point or another of magnifying something more than it should be.
There are many wounded people out there that have been the victims to this sort of thing. We do it openly in conversations and act as if it’s normal. We need to guard against this in our churches and Christian lives. There are many times that new comers or new Christians come to me and are shocked that this happens so openly during fellowship time, while we are cooking, cleaning, or setting things up for Vacation Bible School. Yet at the same time we as Christians are too afraid to magnify the Lord. What is the matter with us? It amazes me when Christians scold each other for praising God in a certain way and then a week later you here the same person that was doing the scolding for worshipping the Lord, profanity or gossip cones out of their mouth. Let us scold the profanity and gossip and encourage worship and praise.
Did you know that most people that get wealthy were big thinkers? These are people who could see in their minds things bigger and better. If we minimize ourself we tend to meet up to how we feel about ourselves. On the other hand if we magnify ourselves, you have a tendency to stretch and try to achieve the goal we have magnified ourself to. Although we see there is a limit to even this. Romans 12:3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith.
We are not to magnify ourselves too high as we see that those who think they are greater than God himself he says in Ps 35:26 Let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together that rejoice at mine hurt: let them be clothed with shame and dishonor that magnify themselves against me.
Genesis 11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9. Therefore the name of it is called Babel
There are definitely times we should magnify certain things. Here are the things we should magnify. We should take the time to magnify the Lord as the psalmist said in Ps 34:3 O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together. Magnify in this verse means to increase or glorify, lift up. To show forth his magnificence, his splendor, grandeur, sublimity. The Lord isn’t proud he just knows who he is. And the verse in Ezekiel 38:23 shows us this truth. “ Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD”.
We all need to take time to see if we are magnifying the Lord above all as we see he truly is magnificent, and worthy of our praise. If we are spending our time magnifying the Father, we will spend less time magnifying things that do not need to be magnified.
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