Make God BIGGER!

¹ I will praise the Lord at all times.
    I will constantly speak his praises.
² I will boast only in the Lord;
    let all who are helpless take heart.
³ Come, let us tell of the Lord’s greatness;
    let us exalt his name together.

⁴ I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me.
    He freed me from all my fears.
⁵ Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy;
    no shadow of shame will darken their faces.

~Ps. 34:1-5

 

When I was younger, we used to play around with a magnifying glass for the wrong reasons. We thought it would be fun to let the Sun shine through it in efforts to magnify the heat intensity on the blade of grass we held it over. In the process it often amazed us how we could see things that were extremely small at a more regular size. What was more captivating & funnier than that, was holding the magnifying glass to someone's regular sized eye, and seeing a colossal version of their eye. 

 

Troubles, anxieties, trials, helplessness, fears...they are all AMPLIFIED when they arise in our lives. They consume our thoughts, control our emotions, take over our dispositions and motivate our behaviors. They are present for a reason, but those listed are NOT why they arise.

 

Our praise is a magnifying glass of sorts. Not that God NEEDS to be magnified...He is already great & mighty. He desires us to magnify Him so that when our problems seem to inflate in size, bringing worry, anxiety and doubt He will be viewed as the Great and Mighty entity that He is.

 

When we shift our thoughts back on God (from our problems) and focus on His grandeur; when we tell others about the amazing things He has done for us; when we meditate on the victorious and compassionate words He has spoken to us...we hold the magnifying glass over our God thus making our issues minuscule in size.

 

The purpose of our 'valleys' are to give us an opportunity to "look to the HILLS (to the Lord) from which comes our HELP (strength in tough times)" [Ps 121].