TASTE AND SEE
Key Verses: “Oh, magnify the Lord with me, And let us exalt His name together…and (He) delivered me from all my fears.” (v.3,4)
Key Theme: The blessedness of looking to God.
Key Descriptives of God: Deliverer (v.4,7,17,19)
Psalm 34 is another life Psalm for me, and perhaps the Psalm I have received the most prophetic words from. It is a Psalm I continually refer to in my messages and most specifically verses 3 and 4. These are guide verses for my life and in simple form contain the wisdom of the ages. It became huge for me when we pastored Daystar in Atlanta and our address was 3434, and our zip code ended in 34. It has become the strategy and guideline for how we approach the 7 Mountain Mandate (start with what God is already doing rather than what the devil is doing) as well as my philosophy in regards to the prophetic in general. It is what allows you to be before a valley of dry bones and see an immense army in potential and then call it out. I honestly don’t know if there is a more important key of life. Let’s dive in.
“Oh, MAGNIFY the Lord with me, And let us EXALT HIS NAME together, I sought the Lord and He heard me and DELIVERED me from ALL my fears.” (v.3,4)
This verse is also laid out as THE strategy for eliminating ALL fears. It all centers around the word MAGNIFY. In the Hebrew GADAL, it also means to “nourish up, grow, promote, or become great or important.” As we ponder the word in English, think “magnifying glass”. You don’t magnify what you already see well. You magnify what you are having a hard time seeing. I learned that anytime fear of any sort is nipping at my heels it is because something other than the Lord has been magnified. Usually, when we think or say “What if…?”, as we process a bad or worst-case scenario, it means we have been magnifying our fears. Instead of “nourishing up” who God is and what He is saying in the scenario, we default to what is already large and study/obsess over it even more. That is normal human processing. It is how we easily become “second heaven” experts rather than “third heaven” experts, and furthermore, we like the ten spies think it valuable intel when it is a destiny-killer.
WHAT YOU FOCUS ON YOU MAKE ROOM FOR
The ten spies that were sent to the Promised Land magnified the giants in the land by focusing on them. Caleb who was of “a different spirit” focused on what God was doing and saying and thus “magnified” who He was in the equation, and was delivered from ALL his fears. What you focus on you make room for. So be careful what you focus on. Neither side lied per se but they each saw an entirely different reality based on what they were disciplined to look at. Caleb saw “a land that flows milk and honey” while being in “reality” surrounded by the Hittites, the Canaanites, and all the rest of the “ites”, including the huge and scary “sons of Anak”. His discipline of magnifying God allowed him to see way oversized grapes and report on that rather than reporting on the impossible to miss GIANTS. He didn’t pretend they weren’t there, he just said “they will be bread for us”. He was so used to magnifying God that rather than comparing himself to the giants as the 10 spies did, he compared God to the giants. He then saw them as a delightful snack to accompany his morning Starbucks. It is a great enemy-reduction strategy.
HOW TO MAGNIFY GOD
You will never learn to minimize your fears unless you learn to magnify God— when He looks small. You magnify and thus maximize God through intentional focus. It doesn’t happen just by reading Ps. 34:3,4. Here’s the example. Say it is Monday morning, and even though you had a great day in church on Sunday where you were riding high in faith and trust, that you are now paying your bills (ugh brought down to earth) and this is an area you are not used to seeing God in. This is an activity you usually fly solo on and you start with looking at your bills (giants). BEFORE you pay your bills, begin telling the Lord who He is to you as Provider. Tell Him that one of His names is Jehovah-Jireh, “the Lord who provides.” Then remind Him (for YOUR sake) who He was in the scriptures. Begin in the Old Testament and tell Him how all His friends were well provided for. Abraham, Joseph, David stories should come to mind. Remind Him how He enticed the children of Israel into the Promised Land by telling of all the great provision (“milk and honey”) that would be there and they would “be the head and not the tail” and they would “lend and not borrow”. Then tell Him who He was in the New Testament in the person of Jesus. His first miracle was a provision miracle providing 150 gallons of awesome wine for a marriage. How He fed the 5000. How He paid for Peter’s taxes. How He filled the disciples’ boats with fish when they were catching nothing. See what I am doing is magnifying the Lord. Then you tell God of provision miracles in your past, as you search in your memory. At some point in your process of magnifying you become aware that your soul can finally seem Him the size He actually is. At that point you declare Him to be so in your life and even prophesy into your future. It is a practice to apply to any area of your life where He is not seen well. Apply it to your relationships, to your destiny, to whatever. See HIM, see Him in the scriptures, see Him in your past, see Him in your present and see Him in your future. It is a little key that will open big doors. If the God you need to see today, you can’t see in the scriptures or in your past, you are unlikely to be able to see Him in your present moment of need/fear. Nourish Him up by magnifying Him. He will deliver you from ALL your fears. Try it today anywhere He seems small or unseen. As baffled scientists in the quantum world have discovered, you activate what you can see. As the follow-up verse 5 says, “they looked to Him and were radiant”.
TASTE AND SEE
“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” (v.8) If you have loved this scripture before just know that it is speaking of the same thing. The way you “taste and see” is by magnifying the Lord. You don’t stop until your soul “tastes” Him. He is Goooooood!
The rest of this Psalm is amazing and too bad we can’t go after all the gold here and it still remain a devotional. Verse 7, is key about the angel of the Lord encamping around us. Verse 10, on how not to lack ANY good thing. Verse 16, shows that when His face is against you (right now “the swamp”) that you are headed for being cut off from remembrance. Verse 18 is a comfort as He says He is always close to those with a broken heart. And finally, verse 19 is one of my all-time favorites. “MANY are the afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers him out of them ALL.” I hate the MANY part but love the ALL part. We would not be very familiar with Him as Deliverer without the MANY. Today, wherever you are and whatever you are walking through this key of magnifying God can be your game changer. Let His face shine upon you.
Written by: Johnny Enlow
Featured Image by chris ganser on Unsplash
67 DAY COUNTDOWN SERIES
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The 67 Day Countdown Series is brought to you by Johnny and Elizabeth Enlow, founders of Restore7 ministry, as well as international speakers and best-selling authors. Among Johnny’s books are The Seven Mountain Prophecy, The Seven Mountain Mantle, Rainbow God, The Seven Mountain Renaissance, Becoming A Superhero, and RISE. Elizabeth serves as CEO and penned Rainbow God: The Seven Colors of Love and God in Every Season.
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