10,000 Reasons预览

Magnify

Worship is about what you choose to magnify. It’s when we magnify the wrong things that we start to get into trouble. Maybe your bank balance isn’t in great shape right now and it’s all you can think about when you wake up in the morning. Or perhaps you’re walking through some friction in a relationship and you can’t seem to see beyond it and focus on anything else in life.

It’s so easy to amplify the wrong things. We can so quickly become consumed with these realities, and our hearts and minds become ruled by them. Of course, none of them—or any other such examples—are irrelevant. In truth, they are very real issues that can be heavy to carry. But the problem comes when, instead of extolling the glory and goodness of Christ, who rules and reigns over our lives and holds all things together, we magnify these other factors instead.

In worship, we learn to magnify His promises instead of our problems, His track record instead of our trials, and His faithfulness instead of our fears. With the naked eye we can look up at that twinkling night sky and see a star shining away, but it takes a telescope to allow us to see a slightly different, fuller, picture. In reality, that star is a gigantic burning mass, hotter and more dynamic than we could ever begin to imagine; but a telescope allows us to comprehend a little more fully what’s really going on. We’re not making that star any bigger, but as we zoom in with the magnification of that telescope, we witness a greater degree of the true reality.

That very same dynamic happens in worship. When we magnify the name of Jesus, it’s not that we make Him any bigger. His grace and His glory are already completely off the charts of our comprehension, and, of course, no one could ever add anything to almighty God. But instead, our magnification of Him is an act of getting more deeply in touch with the true reality of His glory and love. We’re journeying further into His mercy and majesty, and the eyes of our hearts are beholding a little more of the awesome wonder of who it is we’re coming before.

As well as honoring Him, we also benefit from the act of magnifying Jesus. For when we magnify the right things, life looks very different. I always like to say that Jesus is worthy of our worship and He’s also worth worshipping. Even if our praise had zero benefit to us, Jesus has revealed more than enough of Himself to be found utterly deserving of our highest and our best. Worship unlocks so much blessing in our lives, much of which I’m sure we don’t ever really recognize. The truth is, the activity of worship is good for the soul—we tell God how great He is, but in the process we also tell ourselves that we are known and loved by One so gloriously powerful and graciously kind.