“O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.” Psalm 34:3
Got kids? Grand-kids? Dogs? Cats? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Best friend? Loved one? Someone you just adore? Someone you love to speak passionately about? Because you just can’t help yourself? The person is just that fantastic, that wonderful, that awesome, at least in your heart and eyes anyway? So you find yourself constantly gushing at the mouth about your kids, grand-kids, dogs, cats, boyfriend, whomever? Remember the movie from long ago called, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids?” With my middle-aged memory, I can’t even remember if I saw it! But the name of the movie just happened to pop into my mind one morning. Not because I was thinking of the movie, mind you. Or movies or comedies for that matter. But because I believe the Spirit of God placed the words above on my heart. “Honey, I exalted the kids.” Seriously? The Holy Spirit? Would He do something like that? I can’t speak for the Lord, but I know a powerful message came onto my heart as soon as the words came to my mind. A message about what, or more specifically, whom, we exalt in life. And how careful we all need to be. But why? Shouldn’t we speak highly of people?
Most assuredly we should speak well of others. We should bless them with our hearts, words, and actions, and not curse them. But we need to be careful. I don’t have kids. Or grandkids. But I do have loved ones. And dogs. And I know for a fact from listening to others and from my own experience that we humans have a tendency not to just speak well at times of those whom and that which we love, but we have a tendency to exalt them. To make them sound greater than anyone or anything else. So what’s wrong with that? We love them after all, right?
There is nobody, no one, not a single person, not anything for that matter, in the universe we should love more, think more greatly about, speak more well of, and devote ourselves to more so than the Lord God almighty through the Lord Jesus Christ. Not a single name in the universe should be exalted above, lifted higher than, spoken with more reverence of, be more honored than, be more praised, adored, spoken more wonderfully of, more magnified throughout our lives than the Lord Jesus Christ. He is to be exalted as Lord of all above all and everyone in our lives no matter how blessed we are to have people we love in our hearts and lives. Some of us need to do some shrinking of people and stuff in considering this, don’t we? Not that we shouldn’t speak well of others, but we need to be careful to never place them in higher regard in our hearts, in our words, in our writing, in our actions, than the Lord Himself!