Drivetime Devotions October 19, 2026

Welcome to Celebration Baptist Church Podcast, where we help people connect with God and others.

Each week you'll find biblical teaching, practical encouragement, and conversations designed to help you follow Jesus in everyday life.

To learn more about Celebration Baptist Church in Tallahassee, Florida, visit iCelebration.org.

Now let's get started.

Welcome to Drivetime Devotionals, a look at Scripture to help get your school or work week started with your focus in the right place.

I'm Katrina, the Director of Communications at Celebration Baptist.

There are some phrases in the Christian world that are just plain weird.

Those of us who grew up in the church are used to hearing them.

We sing them in songs, we hear them in sermons, we read them in scripture, and sometimes we've heard them so many times that we stop asking what they actually mean.

For me, one of those phrases was magnify the Lord.

I've read Bible verses about magnifying the Lord.

I've sung songs about wanting my life to magnify Jesus, but I'm afraid I never really stopped to think about what that meant.

Somewhere in my mind, magnify the Lord had just become another way of saying worship God.

But there's more to it than that.

Psalm 69, 30 says, I will praise the name of God with a song.

I will magnify him with thanksgiving.

And Psalms 34, 3 says, Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.

Then in the New Testament, Mary begins her song of praise in Luke 1.46 with, My soul magnifies the Lord.

So what exactly are we doing when we magnify God?

The Hebrew word, often translated as magnify, carries the idea of making great, growing great, or declaring something to be great.

But obviously, we can't make God greater.

God is already the creator of the universe.

He is all powerful, all-knowing, eternal, holy, and perfect.

Nothing I do today can add one ounce to his greatness.

So when we magnify God, we aren't making him bigger.

We are helping ourselves and others to see how big he really is.

When I first hear the word magnify, I usually think about a magnifying glass or a microscope.

These devices take something tiny and make it appear bigger so that we can see it.

But I don't think that's the best picture of what it means to magnify God.

A better picture is a telescope.

Okay, I love space.

I can absolutely geek out about NASA astronomy, space exploration, all of that stuff.

The Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope absolutely fascinate me.

I mean, think about what a telescope does.

A galaxy doesn't look tiny in the night sky because it actually is tiny.

It looks tiny because it's incredibly far away.

Some of the things that appear as tiny points of light to us are unimaginably enormous.

A telescope doesn't make them bigger, it helps us to see something that is already enormous more clearly.

That's a picture of what it means for our lives to magnify God.

God doesn't need us to make him impressive, he already is.

But people may not see him clearly.

And sometimes we don't see him clearly.

Our circumstances can look enormous, and God feels small.

Our problems, they're right in front of our faces.

Well, sometimes God feels far away.

Magnifying God changes our perspective.

We intentionally turn our attention towards who God actually is, his power, his goodness, his faithfulness, his holiness.

And suddenly the thing that looked enormous right there beside us is being compared to the God who actually is enormous.

And then we live in such a way that other people can see him more clearly too.

So how do we do that?

I think we can borrow a few ideas here from our telescope.

First, we have to point our telescope in the right direction.

You can have the most powerful telescope in the world, but if it's pointed at the ground, you aren't going to see the stars.

The same is true for us.

Our attention is constantly being pulled in different directions.

Work, school, family, social media, our problems, schedules, money, politics, entertainment.

Prayer turns our attention back to God.

Colossians 4, 2 says, devote yourselves to prayer.

Stay alert in it with thanksgiving.

Prayer reminds us who we're talking to.

And notice that Paul connects prayer with thanksgiving.

When we deliberately remember what God has done and thank him for it, we are reminding ourselves of his greatness.

Second, we need to bring him into focus.

For that, we need scripture.

A blurry picture can leave us guessing about what we're looking at.

And without scripture, it's very easy to create a blurry picture of God based on our feelings, our experiences, or what we've heard other people say about him.

But God has told us who he is.

Psalm 119, 105 says, Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path.

Scripture corrects our distorted view.

It teaches us God's character.

It reminds us of his promises and it shows us what he values and how he teaches us to live our lives to reflect him.

We don't get to decide what God looks like and then show that version to the world.

We learn who he really is through his word.

Finally, we have to let other people look through the telescope of our lives.

Our faith was never intended to be something we hide.

Jesus says in Matthew 5, 16, in the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Notice where the glory goes, not to us.

The goal isn't for people to look at our lives and say, wow, what an amazing person.

The goal is for them to see something in us that points beyond us.

The way we love people, the way we forgive, the way we respond when life goes wrong, the way we serve and the way we treat people who can do absolutely nothing for us, the hope we have when circumstances aren't hopeful, our lives should keep pointing the lens back toward Jesus.

That's what it means to magnify the Lord.

We don't make God greater, we recognize his greatness.

We declare his greatness, and we live in such a way that the people around us get a clearer picture of just how great he already is.

So this week, ask yourself three questions.

Where am I pointed?

What am I focused on?

And when people look at my life, what do they see?

My prayer is that our lives function like telescopes, pointed toward God, focused on his word, and positioned so that people around us can see his greatness more clearly.

And before I go, I want to hear from you.

Magnify the Lord is just one of those Christian phrases that we say all the time without necessarily stopping to think about what it means.

Maybe there's another phrase you've heard in church, read in your Bible, or sung in worship songs that you've always wondered about.

Shoot me an email at info at iCelebration.org and tell me what it is.

I'd love to take some of those phrases and dig into what scripture actually means by them in future drivetime devotionals.

There's a link to my email address in the episode description if you need it.

Until next time, have a great week and keep your focus in the right place.

Thanks for joining us on the Celebration Baptist Church podcast.

We hope today's conversation helps you take another step in your faith journey.

For more resources, upcoming events, and to join us live, visit iCelebration.org.

Until next time, keep connecting with God, connecting with others, and living on mission.