Dear Friends:

Are you anticipating Christmas? Getting ready for the celebration of Jesus’ first coming as a baby many years ago?

The first person ever in history to prepare for Christmas was Mary, the mother of Jesus. And one of my favorite passages of Scripture is the song that she sang in praise and obedience to God when she was given the very special assignment of bringing the Christ-child into the world. The very first two lines of her song say,

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” (Luke 1:46-47)

And that very word, magnify, has been lodged in my brain and my heart in these days. What does it mean to magnify the Lord? He is already big so we cannot magnify Him by making Him bigger. He is already great, so we cannot magnify Him by making Him greater. We could go down a whole list of attributes and realize, with each one, that we cannot magnify the infinite God by increasing Him in any way.

John Piper gave me an interesting insight into this question. He says that we do not magnify God like a microscope magnifies an amoeba by making it to appear larger than it really is. Instead, we magnify God on this earth like a telescope does. Just as a telescope takes a huge, far distant star, and brings it closer visually so we can see its awesomeness and fire and beauty, so we take God’s greatness and love and power and glory and, by being telescopes, so to speak, make Him visible on this earth. That is what it means to magnify the Lord. God was magnified when He became a baby in Bethlehem – not because He became bigger, but because He came closer.

By living out His characteristics, by simply existing as His image, and by speaking of our joy and satisfaction being found entirely in Him, we, too, bring Him closer. And, thus, we magnify Him. We allow people around us to see God through us and, because of that view, to give him the honor and glory that are His due. Without us as telescopes, God may never be made visible enough for many to see who He really is.

And the Bible is full of references to our role in magnifying the Lord. Here are a few (all from the New King James Version):

“Remember to magnify His work of which men have sung. Everyone has seen it; man looks on it from afar.” (Job 36:24-25)

“Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together. (Psalm 34:3)

“I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify Him with thanksgiving.” (Psalm 69:30)

“ . . . and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.” (Acts 19:17b)

“. . . according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body.” (Philippians 1:20)

Does all of that really sink into our hearts? Our focus, not just at Christmas time but always, is to be on the Triune God. God created us for the sole purpose of bringing glory to Him by our lives and by our joy in relationship with Him. We are to be

thanking Him,

honoring Him in our actions and words,

talking about Him to fellow Christians and to those who have not learned to know Him yet, and, in general

doing everything we can to make Him the focus of our attention, our worship, and our purpose in living.

But, I have to say that our natural tendency is to magnify ourselves. We want the attention, the honor, the recognition, the gifts, the promotion, and the acknowledgment. Mary didn’t do that, did she? She said nothing in her hymn of praise that elevated herself at all. Instead she humbly refers to herself as God’s lowly maidservant and then turns all the honor back to God. She truly and sincerely and enthusiastically magnifies Him!

Can we begin to understand how contrary self-magnification is to the true values of God’s world? When we do, we will discover something else: We are the most joy-filled and most satisfied when we magnify, not ourselves, but God. Bringing glory to God brings joy to us. We shouldn’t even try to understand it with our heads. We must just believe it in our hearts.

As an act of faith beginning today let us agree together to magnify God and to turn away from magnifying ourselves. When make that our practice, we will find that joy will sneak up on us and overtake us. Eventually we will find ourselves, in whatever circumstances, to be deeply satisfied and truly content. Magnifying God is the only way to experience the true “Joy to the World” of this season. May it be yours!

Christmas blessings!

Bev

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