46And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord,” [simple_tooltip content=’46 And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
48 For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant;
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.49 For He who is mighty has done great things for me,
And holy is His name.50 And His mercy is on those who fear Him
From generation to generation.51 He has shown strength with His arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.52 He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted the lowly.53 He has filled the hungry with good things,
And the rich He has sent away empty.54 He has helped His servant Israel,
In remembrance of His mercy,55 As He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and to his seed forever.”56 And Mary remained with her about three months, and returned to her house.’](Luke 1:46-56)[/simple_tooltip]
Magnify means “to make greater in size, extent, or effect.” How could Mary make God any greater in any of these ways? Furthermore, God is who He is regardless of what we think about Him. Our unbelief doesn’t diminish who God is, but it can diminish how much of Him and His provision we receive. In that sense, we can limit [simple_tooltip content=’Yes, again and again they tempted God,
And limited the Holy One of Israel.’](Ps. 78:41)[/simple_tooltip] or decrease His ability to move in our lives. Every time we think, Can God? we make Him smaller in our own minds. How can we change that?
“I…will magnify Him with thanksgiving” [simple_tooltip content=’I will praise the name of God with a song,
And will magnify Him with thanksgiving.’](Ps. 69:30)[/simple_tooltip]. That’s what Mary was doing here. Thanksgiving magnifies God in our lives. Through thanksgiving, we exercise the power of our memory to recount all the times He has supernaturally saved us, healed us, delivered us—as well as all the prayers for others He has answered. Our memories stir us up [simple_tooltip content=’Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you,’](2 Pet. 1:13)[/simple_tooltip], and thinking about God’s goodness and faithfulness builds our faith. [simple_tooltip content=’rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.’](Col. 2:7)[/simple_tooltip]
Whatever our minds focus on is what gets magnified. Too often we focus on the bad memories of the past or our fears about the future. Sometimes Satan puts no more than a toothpick in our path, but by the time we get through meditating on all the different ways it could hurt us, that toothpick has increased to the size of a log that completely blocks our path. We need to magnify the Lord by reminding ourselves that no log can stop Him if we just choose to believe.
Mary magnified the Lord and brought the greatest miracle into the world that’s ever happened. You can see your miracle come to pass too. Start magnifying the Lord, and watch your perception of God’s greatness increase today.
