15-5

Magnifies the Greatness of God

So many times we (and others) come to church with so much on our mind that there is no room for God. "What size does God appear to be when our mind is preoccupied with all the cares, worries, and concerns of life? Very small. But God is not small. He is great. Magnifying and cherishing His greatness is at the heart of biblical worship."

J.I. Packer writes,
"Today, vast stress is laid on the thought that God is personal, but this truth is so stated as to leave the impression that God is a person of the same sort as we are-weak, inadequate, ineffective, a little pathetic. But this is not the God of the Bible! Our personal life is a finite thing: it is limited in every direction, in space, in time, in knowledge, in power. But God is not so limited. He is eternal, infinite, and almighty. He has us in His hands; we never have Him in ours. Like us He is personal; but unlike us, He is great."

Our perspective of God changes all the time, depending on what we are focused on. It's like looking at the stars. Sometimes when you walk out at night you hardly notice them. They just look like little dots up on the skyline. One writer says they make the sky look like a back-lit canopy with holes punched in it. But when you look through a high-powered telescope, your entire perspective changes! You will see that they are actually massive balls of fire, millions of times larger than earth! Have the stars changed? Nope. Our vision has. Our job as worship leaders is to help people see God for who He is. Greatness personified.

In order to do that, we have to paint a specific (and accurate) picture of God. A puritan pastor wrote, "We must not allow ourselves to be satisfied with vague ideas of the love of Christ which present nothing of His glory to our minds." Vague ideas about God don't help anyone. "If our songs aren't specific about God's nature, character, and acts, we'll tend to associate worship with a style of music, a heightened emotional state, a type of architecture, a day of the week, a meeting, a reverent mood, a time of singing, or a sound. We'll think of all the things that accompany worship rather than the One we're worshiping. Worse, we'll create our own views of God, portraying Him as we like to think of Him." The problem here is that God has already told us who He is and what He is like. That is not something we get to decide.

So to magnify God's greatness we need to magnify His word, His nature, and His works.

"No matter what we do with lighting, video, sound, or drama, our purpose isn't coming up with the best video images, the hottest musical arrangements, or the most creative props. We want people to leave in awe that God would speak to us-encouraged by His promises, challenged by His commands, fearful of His warnings, and grateful for His blessings. We want them to see God's greatness in His word."

We could talk about the nature of God forever. The list of His amazing characteristics is endless! How can worship of God be boring? There is no limit to His holiness and glory, no end to His riches, wisdom, and righteousness. He holds everything together, He is the source of all goodness. How can we not love and praise Him!?

His works are astounding. The Psalms are full of praises about His works, our songs should be too! The greatest of His works has been sending Jesus to Calvary in our place. It is only through Jesus' blood that we can come near to God at all! "In the cross we find a perfect reconciling of God's blazing holiness, holy justice, incomprehensible wisdom, omnipotent power, and unfathomable love." There truly is no one like our God! That is the picture we need to paint when we are leading others in worship. That is why many of the most helpful books for worship leaders (such as yourselves) are not daily devotionals that bring God "down to our level," but deep theology books that stretch our understanding of who God is.

"Magnifying God's greatness begins with the proclamation of objective, biblical truths about God, but it ends with the expression of deep and holy affections toward God. We aren't simply reciting facts about God, like students reviewing their multiplication tables. God wants us to delight in Him. He is exalted when all our energies are directed to one end-being satisfied in who He is. 'The engagement of the heart in worship is the coming alive of feelings and emotions and affections of the heart,' John Piper writes. 'Where feelings for God are dead, worship is dead.'"

In other words, we need to have two components in our personal worship, and in the worship we lead others in. We need to have an intellectual knowledge and right understanding of God, and we need to have a strong emotional attachment to Him. Many times we lean one way or the other. We are either afraid people will think we are too emotional and so our worship becomes stiff and lifeless, or we want to show others how much we love God and our worship of Him gets lost in our emotional experience. God wants us to show emotions, but He wants our emotional response to come from a right knowledge of who He is and what He has done for us.

"Magnifying God's greatness, then, involves proclamation and passion. Our responsibility as worship leaders is to make sure that in both ways-biblical truth and strong affections-people have every opportunity to magnify and encounter our great and awesome God."

Enjoy the Journey