Rejoice! Be Glad! Magnify the Lord!
“Let all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; And let those who love Your salvation say continually, “Let God be magnified.” (Psalm 70:4, NASB95)
With so much going on in our world, we often get confused about what it means to obey God and how to go about it. How can we make an impact on our world with so much going on? Corona Virus, shutdowns, shelter-in-place orders, racial unrest, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, crime, poverty, hunger, oppression.the list just seems to go on and on. What are we supposed to do? How do we follow God by faith during so much upheaval and challenge?
In this short psalm, David gave some directions. First, he said let those who seek God rejoice. Inherent in this statement is the assumption that his readers would be those who seek God. We need to seek after God with all our hearts. We need to seek God like never before. We need to spend time reading, meditating upon, teaching, sharing, and obeying His word. We need to grow in our prayer time and life. We need to connect with our church families and develop closer relationships with other believers of other churches. We need to lift believers who are down, invest in missions with our money, time, talents, and attention, and look for what God is doing around us. We need to seek God.
After the assumption that those to whom he was speaking would seek God, David said we are to rejoice. Given all that is going on, this might seem counterintuitive. How can we rejoice when injustice seems to reign where righteousness should? How can we rejoice when children starve to death, aged couples are strained because one has begun to lose the memories of their lives built together, and people seem to want to turn to lawlessness as the answer to the crime that is rampant on our streets? How can I rejoice when I don’t feel joy?
First, realize that David was not talking about being happy about what is going on. He did not say to be happy that some people consider African-Americans not of equal value as their white brothers and sisters, that Hispanics are disparaged, Native Americans maligned and mistreated, Middle Eastern Americans suspected, or Whites accused of abuse across the board. He did not say to be happy, he said to rejoice and not only to rejoice, but to rejoice in God. Regardless of what is going on around us, we can find a deep, abiding sense of settled satisfaction in God as the very place we turn when everything else seems to be out of control. This is an active choice and not a passive emotional response.
He also said to be glad in God. I know that we often object similarly to that above. How can I be glad about what is going on around me? We are not told to be glad about sin, brokenness, or sorrow, but to be glad in Him. Regardless of the pain around us, we can be glad in Him because we can be confident that the light will shine brightest after it has gotten the darkest. While we long for our world to be healed and fixed, we are told it will get much worse before it is remade, and we live with Him forever (Revelation 2122). So, even though it gets dark now, the light will shine and if you have a relationship with Jesus Christ as your own Lord and Savior, you have a reason to be glad in Him.
Lastly, we are told to magnify God. Instead of allowing our circumstances to determine how we view God, perhaps we need to let how we view God determine how we look at our circumstances. Perhaps we need to pray for, seek, search for, long for, find, discover, share, and proclaim the glory of God and that will cause us to realize that the things going on around us are not the incredible, life-sucking, fear-inspiring things that threaten our faith, but instead opportunities for God to work and shine through as He works in us. Like the others, magnifying the Lord is not an automatic response, but a conscious choice.
In this world that seems out of control, let’s choose to seek God, rejoice in Him, be glad in Him, and magnify Him so we get the focus off of us and our problems for then we might begin to see His solutions.