The answer to every problem is found in the Lord. Often that answer comes by a fresh revelation of the Lord rather than by a revelation of the answer itself. Many people come to the Lord for an answer to their problems, when actually their need is not so much for an answer to problems as it is for a new revelation of the Lord Himself. A new revelation of the Lord not only takes away many of the questions in your mind; it also orients you to the course your life is to follow.
Do not serve God for solutions; serve Him because you love Him and want Him. What do you seek? Do you want to be blessed with a little more money or with a few more solutions so that your life is more comfortable? Or are you truly believing for a walk with God? Are you believing that the Lord will be great in your life? This is the key.
Psalm 34 will help you to grasp this truth. The heading of this Psalm explains, A Psalm of David when he feigned madness before Abimelech, who drove him away and he departed. However, it does not sound like the psalm of a madman at all; it sounds like the psalm of a man who has found a real answer. David exclaimed: I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; the humble shall hear it and rejoice. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. They looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried and the Lord heard him; and saved him out of all his troubles. Psalm 34:1–6.
The cross references in the margin point to three other Scriptures. In Psalm 35:27 David said, Let them shout for joy and rejoice, who favor my vindication; and let them say continually, “The Lord be magnified, who delights in the prosperity of His servant.” In Psalm 69:30, he declared, I will praise the name of God with song, and shall magnify Him with thanksgiving. This same thing is expressed in Luke 1:46, the beginning of the Magnificat. And Mary said: “My soul exalts the Lord” (or “makes great the Lord”).
These Scriptures present a picture of the only way to walk with God. At one time David had to feign madness before Abimelech in the land of the Philistines so that the Philistines would not kill him (I Samuel 21:10–15). At that time he was a fugitive from King Saul, who also wanted to kill him. David went through a period when, instead of being the sweet psalmist of Israel whom everyone loved, he was hunted like a dog. Yet during all that time, the anointing to be king was upon him. In the midst of his troubles, he responded, “Come, let us magnify the Lord.”
You will either magnify your problems, or you will magnify the Lord. If your problems look big to you, you had better shrink them down by seeing how great the Lord is, how greatly He is to be praised. Instead of magnifying your problems, magnify Him. The secret of being encouraged is to be aware of the Lord. Fearfulness, unbelief, withdrawal, and rebellion all are the result of a lack of faith and love for the Lord, a lack of an awareness of His presence.
This is the time of the Parousia. If there is one thing we seek, it is that we keep our focus upon the Lord with a continual awareness of Him and His greatness. The Spirit may emphasize various truths as we move on in the Lord, but underlying each one of them is the basic truth of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It never ceases to be that. As we talk about gifts or ministries, we must not focus on the mechanics of ministry and forget that there are diversities of ministrations, but it is always the same Lord (I Corinthians 12:5). We keep our eyes upon the Lord, because while we look to Him, we move. If we look at ourselves and at the gifts of the Spirit, it is very easy to be distorted in our motivation. There are people who want to move in a gift, but they have no awareness of the Lord. It is always easy to tell when that is the problem.
The first and the last point of emphasis is this: Magnify the Lord; let Him be great. That is what He wants to be to you. God always seeks to reveal Himself to His people. In Old Testament times He came and introduced Himself as the Lord God Almighty, the Great All-Sufficient One. He revealed Himself by many names. Each time He was trying to show that there is no limit with Him! Many people have such a limited revelation of the Lord in their own hearts that they walk in defeat. They beset themselves with troubles that they do not need to have. They would not have many of those troubles if the Lord were greater in their sight.
An example of how this works can be seen by looking at denominational churches, not to criticize them, but to see something that is very obvious in their relationship to God. They all worship the same God, but each one sees only one aspect of Him. In effect, they build a fence around that aspect of God and say, “He is going to be this much to us, and no more.” There are many people who go to Baptist churches, and the Baptists tell them exactly what God is like. They teach that God can save you; and if He saves you, you can never be lost. However, they do not teach that you can believe God for healing or for miracles, or that you can speak in tongues. They believe that all of those things are past. It is not surprising that the Baptist God works for the Baptists just the way they say He does. He does not heal many of them, and not many of them speak in tongues. God is very accommodating to the Baptists. He becomes a Baptist God to them.
Other people in other churches see another aspect of God. Some groups teach that God is a God of holiness; therefore, they preach the law, right down the line, saying that God will judge you if you do wrong. And He does! They magnify that one aspect of God, forgetting the grace of God, and they get exactly what they believe for. God has an amazing way of manifesting the side of His nature that you perceive. Charismatic Christians believe that they can have the gifts of the Holy Spirit; therefore God gives them the gifts and they write books about it. The Charismatic God really works for the Charismatics; but they, too, are building a fence around just one aspect of Him.
It is not that one group is right and everyone else is wrong. Actually, all are a little bit right and very much wrong, because they refuse to let God be as great as He really is. The Lord is so great that we should constantly say, “Come, let’s magnify the Lord! Let’s let Him be as great as He really is!”
If you limit God, you project yourself into a great deal of trouble. Psalm 78 tells how the Israelites perished in the wilderness. It was because they limited the Holy One of Israel (verse 41, KJV). It was not the mistakes they made which caused them to fail. The mistakes were just an effect of the basic cause of their harassment—they limited the Lord who had brought them out. They grumbled, “Can He give us bread to eat? Can He give us flesh to eat?” They murmured when the waters were bitter. They murmured, and God murmured back at them. He did not like it. If you murmur at God that is what you will receive from God. Concerning the Lord, Psalm 18:25–26 tells us, “To the merciful, Thou wilt show Thyself merciful. To the froward, Thou wilt show Thyself froward.” What does that mean? You had better not get tough with God, or you will soon find out that God can be tough, too.
The problem is not that people have the wrong idea of God; they simply do not have enough of the right idea of God. Their revelation is limited. We do not need to analyze the details of doctrines under a microscope until we understand all there is to know about them. What we really need to know is more of the Lord; we need to see Him great and magnified. That is the key. That is what will enable us to walk with God effectively.
There may be many things that you do not understand, but do not worry about them. Instead, pray, “Lord, give me a bigger vision of Thyself. Show me Thyself.” When you pray that way, the Lord appears great to you, so great that you realize, “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). Soon you begin to have a different viewpoint, and you realize, “Nothing shall be impossible to him that believes” (Mark 9:23). First you must throw off the limitations about the Lord. Let the Lord be magnified. Then you will also see yourself in a new light, and this revelation will not stop there, either. You will also see your brothers and sisters in a new light. If you do not have to accept any limitation for yourself, then you do not have to believe in a limitation for anyone else either. You can have great faith.
Our difficulty is that we are always evaluating our circumstances. If God is not great in our sight, then we tend to condemn ourselves and to take a very dim view of our effectiveness and worthwhileness, and rightly so. If we are not trusting in God with all of our hearts and believing that He is able to do all He has spoken then we are limiting ourselves in our thinking, and we accept impasses against the moving of God that have existed for years. Sometimes we almost believe that we must coexist with those impasses. We do not. Any impasse that stands in the way of the gospel of the Kingdom sounding to the ends of the earth can be broken. We can demolish those impasses. However, we will not do it with self-confidence. Our initial confidence must be in the Lord. When we put our confidence in Him, then we have the right confidence.
Face this! The Lord will only work in this manner. What did Paul say about this? Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God; who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. II Corinthians 3:5–6.
Self-confidence is not what God wants; He wants confidence in Himself, in our revelation of Him. If you have that, you can move mountains because of your holy confidence in the Lord, because of your revelation of the Lord. Nothing then can stand in your way. If you approach things in another way, or try to build yourself up by the power of positive thinking, you are just striving in vain with a philosophical approach. Do not say, “If I keep thinking right, maybe that mountain will go away.” No, it will only go away when you bring a very great God into it, and not until then! Have you wondered why your problems do not go away? They will not go away until the greatness of God smiles upon you. That great revelation will cause the problems to vanish in your sight.
Is this not true of all of your relationships? For instance, a husband and wife may relate fairly well, but why do they not get along better? It is not necessarily that they do not love each other. It comes back to this: they must have a great love for God and a great revelation of God smiling upon their family. Not one couple whose marriage has been blessed by God should ever be discouraged with each other. If you are discouraged, it is because you do not really know the Lord as you ought to know Him. Realize that you have the wrong approach to your marriage. As you seek the face of the Lord together, you will be amazed at how much your mate changes, how much nicer he (or she) appears. He changes because you are looking at him with different eyes, with a heart of faith. You are seeing him in the light of God’s greatness. Almost any problem can be solved by magnifying the Lord.
The Scriptures tell us that God is our shield, our rock, our fortress (Psalm 18:2). His Word is our sword (Hebrews 4:12). We need to have a book that pictures these qualities of God. We must avoid making an image or any physical representations, either of our blessed Christ or of the Father; but we can picture the things that show His greatness and the way He wants to relate to us. We can portray a shield, a sword, a sun and a shield shining together along with the Scriptures which speak of these characteristics of God. This is the way to teach little children from the very beginning to have the right concept of God—not that God looks like the sword or the shield, but that this is what He is to us. Such a book would be good for parents also.
The revelation of the Lord is the key. We will never go anyplace without it. We will face opposition and persecution just as the Lord Jesus Christ did; but we cannot use that persecution as an excuse for not doing the will of God. We are to rejoice and be exceedingly glad—if we can (Matthew 5:12). If we cannot rejoice, it is because we still are placing some confidence in ourselves, believing that with a good image, and with wisdom, tact, and psychology, we can teach people to walk with God. The Lord has to show us that we will never bring people into a true walk with God through a promotion of ourselves to the world. The people who seem to be effective by these programs are not really making disciples at all. It is an illusion. Nothing much happens until God is the only one who receives the glory.
In I Corinthians 4:13, Paul told how the early disciples were called “the offscouring of all things.” A better term in modern English would be “the scum of the earth.” Jesus Himself was called a glutton and a winebibber (Matthew 11:19). Do you see the picture? True disciples will never have a good name in the world. Persecution should hold no terror for us. If we do not deserve it, we should be happy. If it is true persecution, brought about because God is being glorified in our lives, we should be glad. The Lord allows that to happen. Great hostility will come against the remnant of God in this day. Jesus said that people will think they are doing God a favor by destroying His servants (John 16:2). Nevertheless, God will be glorified. All we have to do is magnify the Lord and keep our eyes on Him.
Magnifying the Lord also helps with our relationships within the Body of Christ. If you can believe that God is great enough to use you, then you will not limit another man by saying that it is impossible for God to use him. If our salvation is “not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9), then why should our evaluation of ourselves or of one another be on the human plane? Our evaluation of one another must be on the divine plane. Because the Lord is great, we can all be great! We can do nothing in ourselves, but we can do everything in God. We can be all things to all men (I Corinthians 9:22).
The Lord demands that we break out of the human level of relating. He could perform a dozen miracles for you, but if there were no revelation of Himself in it, you would not be any better off for the miracles; you would only be serving Him for the loaves and fishes, because He could do something for you. That is not the true basis for service to God. You must serve Him because “He is greatly to be praised,” because you are turning your heart toward Him. Do you see that if you turn your heart toward Him, you will not impose a limitation on what He can do with you, and neither will you qualify what He can do with another person?
Has God put you in a place where you cannot trust in yourself, so that you can be part of the true circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh? Philippians 3:3. This is the way you must walk. Magnify the Lord. Glorify Jesus Christ. Let Him be great.
Do not focus on persecutions or troubles, but focus on Him. You may at times be deeply troubled, but remember that God works all things together for good to those who love Him (Romans 8:28). Because you love Him, you can come through very difficult situations and have a walk with God which you would not have had otherwise. Why is this? Because when the problem becomes too great for you, your heart seeks the Lord, and He becomes greater to you than the problem; the problem is met, and you find a walk with God.
Let us dedicate ourselves to see the Lord. He must be great. He must be magnified. Our worship will change to a greater depth and solemnity than before. The more we are focused upon the Lord and upon the revelation that we have of Him, the more awestruck we will be at the greatness of the Lord, and the more awesome our worship will be. We will not be able to explain it to people. We are dropping our old ideas of God so that we can meet the God of the Kingdom, the Lord of lords and the King of kings (Revelation 17:14). He will be very great in our hearts.
This is what the Parousia is. The revelation of the Lord will not come to people who are focused on their problems. This revelation of the Parousia will come unto those who look for Him until He appears (Hebrews 9:28), who desire to see Him as He is (I John 3:2). John tells us that everyone who has this hope within him purifies himself (I John 3:3). It is not a matter of introspection or of trying to clean up the old man; it is a matter of a revelation of the Lord. In our sight He becomes so great, so wonderful, that we would not do anything to displease Him.
Let us magnify what God is doing now in the earth. Many people are coming into a true walk with Him, because we exalt the Lord and lift Him up. When Christ is lifted up, all men will be drawn unto Him (John 12:32). We must repent for the times when we focused on our problems instead of seeking a greater revelation of the Lord. God can bring forth His will through us, through our brothers and sisters. He is not limited; therefore, we are not limited either.