I am a Worship Pastor. So quite honestly, for me, music and art have always been an easy pathway into the presence of God, but over the years He has invited me to enter into worship through some different gates. The LORD, has taught me so much about worship, but every time I sit to write about it, I become overwhelmed.

There is an enormity to this subject, because it is both simple and complex.  It’s what we were made for.  Purpose is completely interwoven into the tapestry of identity–who God made us to be. So, overwhelmed or not,  have decided to dig out and explore the different words of worship we use.

 

I’m excited to take this journey, because I really believe there is an invitation to deeper intimacy and revelation.  Sometimes in our Christian sub-culture, the meaning of words can get lost in a web of familiarity.  What I mean is that we use words that sound nice to describe our activity, but fail to understand the full impact of their meaning.  This journey will look at our words so that we can dissect the full import and then press into them more.

 

Our words of worship should help frame our response and activity directed to the LORD.  We were made to worship; worship is about oneness with the LORD—this is our primary function.

 

 

 

 

Foundations

 

Before we get knee deep into it, let’s establish some basic theology.  God is infinite and self-sufficient.  He is perfect, lacking in no way.  That means, he doesn’t actually need our worship.

 

Gasp—What?

 

The reality is, God didn’t create us because he needed us; he created us because he wanted to—because he could.

 

Worship is an invitation for intimacy.  He created us to live within the context of relational community, and that’s what worship facilitates.  In order to worship God, we must acknowledge that he is God and we are not.  Every act of worship starts with surrendering our view of ourselves so that we can behold the greatness of God.

 

We must continue to expand our concept of worship beyond church gatherings and congregational singing. Please don’t misunderstand me, our group worship gatherings are valuable and important, but worship is so much more than any given Sunday morning, with the band and the message.  We must also beware of reducing worship to ministry acts of service.  Every worship offering must start in the heart—it’s an intentional surrendering of will, prompted when we look at the face of God.

 

 

 

Words of Worship: Magnify

 

I have a growing list of words of worship, but I keep going back to “Magnify.”  So, this is where the journey starts.

 

“Oh, magnify the LORD with me,

and let us exult his name together!” Psalm 34:1

 

How many times have you sung a lyric that says, I will magnify the LORD…?  Ever thought about what that really means?  Even more, do you believe it?

 

“To make greater in actual size; enlarge…to make more exciting, intensify; dramatize; heighten…” Dictionary.com

 

So, the word magnify means to make greater.    I know, this is not earth shattering new information, but I always like to have a base point for reference.  Stay with me.  I want you to just think about it for a few minutes.

 

Consider how you use a magnifying glass to make a bug appear greater than it does to the naked eye.  Pretty amazing, right—but why would you do that? What is the value of making something greater?  Why is it important to see all of the detail?

 

There is a deep appreciation that forms out of knowing and understanding.  I’m not talking about a cursory nod of the head that simply acknowledges, I’m talking about value.  When you behold a microscopic organism made greater through a lens, it affords the ability to really see the details.  Details are important because they help us understand how and why things work a certain way.

 

When we apply this idea to our view of God, what does it take to magnify him?  Because it’s not enough that we say it, sing it, or pray it, we must also actually do it. I don’t know about you, but as I dissect this word, it changes everything.  Magnifying the LORD forces a re-examination of the heart—Every. Single. Time.

 

 

 

 

Magnification—the practice

 

All week, I keep asking the LORD, how do I magnify you?  In fact, I gathered my band together on Wednesday night and asked them, what does it mean to magnify the LORD and how do you do it?   The result was similar to my own.  It took a few minutes of digging out the meaning and really thinking about it before actual examples came to mind.  Maybe you have felt the same thing as you are reading…

 

Worship is not meant to be an unconscious thing.  Everything about it is intentional because true worship engages our entire being—body, soul, spirit, and mind.  Our words of worship have meaning, so we must embody the meaning when we use them to demonstrate our love to the LORD.

 

The most obvious way to magnify the LORD is to use words that describe his worth.  You know what I mean, because we do this all the time as we sing together at our Church gatherings—perhaps you do it in your quiet times of worship too.  Declaring the Psalms that lift the LORD up, also magnify God.  There are hundreds of ways to speak it, sing it, or pray it, but there is so much more to it.

 

To magnify the LORD, means we make him greater.  Now, I’m not suggesting that we the created have any ability to make the creator greater, but the words of worship give us the ability to position our heart and align it with truth. That action alone magnifies the LORD.   Worship facilitates intimacy, which leads to oneness.  The idea of making God greater is about rehearsing the truth that He is God most high over everything—not in the abstract, but in the actual.

 

God is magnified when I surrender every moment, every thought, every action to his infinite greatness.

 

 

 

 

Intentional worship

 

“God’s presence defines us; we need more of Him.  If you can casually meander through worship, then I would dare say that maybe, just maybe, you have not entered into true worship at all.”¹ 

 

Remember how I said we must embody our words of worship?  You cannot just pick these words and throw them into the atmosphere without living them first. True intentional worship is always birthed because of an encounter with the God.  Worship is how we express God’s worth.

 

Have you ever come across a piece of scripture that lavishly declares God’s worth, but felt no sense of connection to it?  I have. In the early days of my Christian walk I wrestled with many verses that seemed so strange.  As I read through the Psalms I often thought David was emotionally unhinged, until I began to press in and ask God about it.  The LORD helped me to see how David responded to his invitation to come close.

 

David was a man after God’s own heart, which makes him one of the best examples of what true worship looks like.  He understood what it meant to trust the LORD.  He surrendered himself over and over, magnifying the power of God in his life. Because he trusted and surrendered, he demonstrated the worth of God most high.  And God did not disappoint; he always showed up.

 

 

 

 

Magnify the LORD

 

Okay, so here’s where I have landed.  Magnification is tool, by which we see, but it has to start in the heart first.  What I mean, is that you and I must learn to magnify God from the context of our own lives first.

 

How we live should demonstrate the greatness of God.  Our lives become the actual lens that magnifies, which is how we embody the words of worship.  When we practice radical trust, and surrender to God in every detail of our lives—body, soul, spirit, and mind—we magnify him.  God is glorified when we live from his presence, but we can only do that when we engage with him completely.

 

 

 

 

Intimacy is intentional and it is conscious.  There is no way to enter in unless your entire being is engaged—eyes wide open. Worship isn’t something we save for certain moments of our lives, it’s how we live through ALL the moments of our lives.

 

We can use words of worship to magnify the LORD, but the they are only as powerful as the experiences behind them can testify.  It’s not enough to just say that God is good, we must learn to draw from our experiences of his goodness.  And we must not be satisfied with our current experiences, because there is more.

 

So, here’s the take away; let’s get practical. 

 

The assignment is to intentionally magnify the LORD this week.  Consider how you can use your life as the instrument to do it.  Using words to speak it or sing it are great, but this exercise is designed to push you deeper, so resist the urge to use your voice.  And then, I’d love to hear back from you.  Drop a comment below telling me about your experiences with the LORD on your journey of practicing intentional magnification.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Maureen Brown | Unrestrained.us

1. Darlene Zschech, “Worship Changes Everything,” (Bethany House Publishers, 2015), p.9