In what has been called, the “Song of Mary” we hear the virgin mother declare that “My soul magnifies the Lord” (Luke1:46), and I can’t help but believe that there is something of value in those words for all believers.
To magnify something, we must first focus on it, and when we do, there is a natural tendency to notice details we may have missed. We might even call that, taking a closer look. If we don’t lose or shift our focus, the magnitude of our revelation generally grows.
We certainly see this principle when we focus on our problems. As we gaze at our unpaid bills, broken relationships, illness’, conflicts… we can quickly lose perspective, feeling as though our whole life hinges on these particular issues. Discouragement and depression often follow.
If it is so with the darkness, should it not be so with the light as well. We need to see God as bigger than our problems, bigger than our hurts, bigger than our enemy… While we must face difficult situations in our life, and continually battle our own flesh, there is a perspective that we cannot afford to lose. The scripture says that we should not fix our eyes (i.e. focus) on what is seen, which is perishing, but on what is unseen, which is eternal (2Cor.4:18).
This reminds me of a scene from the “Passion of the Christ”, where Mary and Jesus come face to face on the way to Calvary. Jesus has been ruthlessly beaten, and will soon hang on the cross to die, yet He says, “Look, I make all things new”.
Everything in that circumstance seemed to be out of control and dire, yet Jesus hadn’t lost the heavenly perspective. Similarly, as Stephen was being stoned, he was able to look directly into heaven, and to pray for the forgiveness of His oppressors. Though his body was being destroyed, his soul was magnifying the Lord.
As we go through our day to day lives, there are undoubtedly times when situations seem overwhelming, and our perspective gets out of balance. In those moments, it is important to recognize what is happening, and to regain an eternal outlook.
In order to do this I believe it is essential that we get alone with God. Throughout the gospels we often see Jesus walk away from His disciples, and other followers to be alone with the Father. Though He was a man of perfect faith, who knew no sin, He still had the need to spend time with the Father. I would submit that, at least in part, this is what allowed Jesus to maintain His heavenly perspective, despite the consistent conflict and rejection he faced during His ministry years.
Someone who has tried to “pray” their way out of discouragement may say that this doesn’t always work, but I believe that this is where the phrase “magnify the Lord” becomes most significant.
Prayer can take on many forms, and not all forms are necessarily effective in the midst of despair. I believe that there is a natural tendency in the midst of difficult circumstances to ask God for answers, or to pray for the outcome that we desire. But God does not owe us answers, nor has He promised us our desired outcomes.
Even if we’re just asking for divine direction, it can be difficult to hear His voice above the other voices at work within us. The problem with these types of prayers is that they allow us to remain focused on the situation, which often distorts our perspective and inhibits us from receiving truth.
I sense that before we pray through some of these situations, we must first recognize that we’ve lost our perspective, and acknowledge our need to simply “magnify the Lord”. If we can lay aside our grievances and petitions, quiet ourselves before Him, focus on who He is, consider His goodness, remember what He’s already accomplished in our lives, and think upon what His word says, His stature as the sovereign God of the universe begins to grow.
Whatever amount of time is necessary to regain this eternal perspective is well worth it. When this happens, the ministry of the Comforter avails itself, and our ability to hear from the Lord is restored. Even if we don’t get specific direction, that abiding peace carries us through.
I used to associate peace with a lack of conflict and/or adversity, but I now understand that true peace only comes from God, and that it is His response to conflict and adversity. Our minds struggle with that, but that’s why God offers a “peace that surpasses understanding”.
The concept of magnifying the Lord is beautifully captured in the old hymn, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”. “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace”.
Perhaps as important as regaining our perspective, is learning how to maintain it in the midst of our daily struggles. While we’ve grown up with the idea of Sunday being the Lord’s Day, I believe that the scripture would point us to a constant awareness of Him, and who we are relative to Him.
It admonishes us to focus on the eternal things (2Cor.4:18), to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt.6:33), to live by the Spirit (Rom.7:6, Rom.8:13-14, 2Cor.3:3, Gal.5:18), to be content (Heb.13:5), to pray continually (1Thes.5:17), to give thanks in all circumstances (1Thes.5:18), to speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, to sing and make music in your heart to the Lord (Eph.5:19).
Now all that might sound a little unrealistic in the context of our daily lives, but it may also be necessary to clarify what we mean by “reality”. Several years ago, I had one of those mountain-top God experiences that went on well into the night. As I fell asleep in the wee small hours, I felt so close to Him, and full of faith.
But when I woke up the next morning for work, I grumbled to myself “back to reality”. As soon as the words escaped my mouth, a wave of conviction washed over me. I felt like the Lord challenged, “How do you know the difference between reality, and a dream?” And as I considered a couple of very realistic dreams I’d had, the only answer I could come up with was, “you wake up from a dream”.
I immediately sensed the Lord retort, “That’s correct, and one day you will wake up from the dream of this life, to the reality of eternity!”
Often times, we Christians point to the struggles of this life as reality, but if we believe the scripture, there is only one avenue to truth. If God hasn’t become that reality for us yet, I’d suggest that we might need to spend some time magnifying the Lord, and allow His reality to consume whatever reality we’ve been living.
Some might suggest that we risk becoming “too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good”, but I would submit that there is far greater danger in being too earthly minded to be of any heavenly good.
Bjcorbin's Blog 
Taking the Bait
October 5, 2022 by bjcorbin
I’m not much of a fisherman, but I’ve recently been thinking about fishing lures. While many fishermen prefer live bait, certain situations call for the use of lures, which can consist of any number of different elements (e.g. rubber, plastic, feathers…) used to attract the fish. For those who know what they’re doing, there is a whole science to deciding what elements to use for a particular application.
The specific lure that I remember using as a kid was called a “spinner”. It had shiny metallic pieces on it, and as it moved through the water it created a spinning motion, which resulted in little flashes of light meant to attract the fish.
In a time of prayer, I saw a picture of a spinner, moving just below the surface of the water, with little flashes of light coming from it, and pronged hooks protruding from the end. I felt like this picture was symbolic of the spiritual battle that we face each day. Though we know that the enemy often comes disguised as an angel of light, we often don’t recognize the deception until after his hooks are into us.
An enemy that doesn’t have the power to overwhelm you with a direct assault must resort to special tactics to achieve the desired result. Normally, deception and distraction are an integral part of such a strategy.
Our enemy is a master of deception, and in Western culture we have made distraction almost an art form. Of course, we don’t refer to it as distraction, we call it entertainment, amusement, recreation, chilling out, a sport, a pastime, a hobby, a special interest…, but regardless of what we call it, our attention is easily snatched away from the more substantial issues of life.
I would submit that our enemy loves these pre-occupations, and that they’ve been amongst his most effective tools in facilitating moral decay within our culture. He doesn’t have to convince someone to embrace evil, he simply needs to keep them too pre-occupied with the temporal to even ponder the eternal.
The truth is that most people within our culture still believe in the idea of God (or a “higher power”), and of being a “good” person. But most are too busy pursuing their own interests to commit to any sort of relationship with God, or a church community, or anyone else for that matter. In theory, those of us who count ourselves as followers of Christ ought to be a little harder to deceive, but our predisposition towards being distracted is much the same as the cultures.
We can spend our whole Christian walk pursuing knowledge, titles, positions, spiritual gifts, experiences, credentials, recognition… We can champion causes we’re passionate about, and fill our calendar with church activities. Yet we may never really come to know the person of Christ, or be used by Him in a substantial way to touch the lives of others.
While all of these pursuits may seem virtuous and worthwhile, unless God is calling us to them, they are simply a distraction from what He is calling us to. Given the ineffectiveness of the church in touching the world, it is likely that this is more prevalent than any of us would like to admit.
In Stephen Covey’s book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, he suggests that a person (or organization…) create what he calls a “Mission Statement”. This statement should encompass what that person’s (or organization’s…) ultimate goal (i.e. mission) is.
As conflicts arise, Covey suggests that they must be evaluated as to their bearing on achieving this ultimate goal. His premise is that we spend a lot of time and energy on things that really don’t make any significant difference in achieving our over-arching mission.
He suggests that if it isn’t going to move us toward our ultimate destination, that we shouldn’t spend a significant amount of resources on it. For the church, it would seem as though the “Great Commission” might be a good mission statement, or maybe Jesus’ statements as to the “greatest commandment”. Considering those examples, it is difficult to reconcile many of the things “the church” involves itself with.
From global warming, to student loan forgiveness, to who resides in the White House, the church seems to immerse itself in conflicts, that at the very least seem useless, and in many cases are counterproductive, in achieving our eternal purposes. If we are investing the resources of the church in areas that it’s not been commissioned for, we are depleting those resources for doing the work it has been commissioned for.
On an individual level, the distractions are even more abundant. We can easily get caught up in the day to day struggle to raise our families, and lose sight of our higher calling. Like Covey, the Apostle Paul encourages us to keep pressing toward the goal; he also reminds us that a good soldier doesn’t involve themselves in “civilian” affairs. These words speak of avoiding things that will distract us from our greater purpose.
If we don’t keep focused, something as little as the way someone looks at us, or their tone of voice, can pull us off track. One unkind word, or interpersonal struggle is often all that it takes to make us forfeit the joy of our salvation. A situation on the job, or an unpaid bill may be all that it takes for us to forget the hope we have in Christ. We must understand that within these situations there is a hook that our enemy means to get into us, and we must learn not to grab hold of it.
We’re often so quick to respond to these issues without guidance from the Lord, and then get overwhelmed by the consequences of acting under our own power. A fish is simply driven by their instinct, and if it survives, it can be hooked over and over again with the same bait. As believers, filled with God’s Spirit, we need to be wiser than that, and learn to take every thought captive.
We need to recognize that our enemy is always using people, and situations in an effort to snag us, and choose not to take that bait. We need to understand that apart from God we can do nothing, and that if He isn’t calling us to the battle, He isn’t under any obligation to equip us for it.
As Paul said, we must press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us. Adding that, “One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus”. We too must push every hindrance aside, and throw off the things which mean to entangle us, so that we might run the race that’s been marked out for us.
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