“O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together.”
-Psalm 34:4
This is the verse that my wife, Heather, and I chose to be our theme in marriage. “O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together.”
Psalm 34:4 Encourages Worship in the Context of Community
When we joined our lives with each other, our picture that we had in our mind was okay, to this point, by God’s grace, since he saved us, we have lived individually to magnify the Lord, to exalt His name, and now we’re joining our lives to do this together.
So let’s live this verse to the full. Let’s make this our theme for whatever years God gives us until He brings us home, “Let’s magnify the Lord together. Let’s exalt his name together.” And obviously, there’s a picture there in marriage, but there’s also a picture, and that’s really what Psalm 34 is talking about, of just the people of God saying this to one another.
Just imagine looking around the brothers and sisters in your local church. This is what God has brought you together for, to magnify Him with each other, to exalt His name together in ways that don’t just happen individually, but that happen corporately together. And then even beyond your local church. Most of you who listen to this podcast are in different local churches than the one I’m in. But isn’t this what we say to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ?
“Let’s magnify the Lord with each other. Let’s exalt his name together.” So can we just pray now that this verse would be the theme of all of our relationships with other brothers and sisters in Christ and marriage and family, as kids come to Christ, let’s do this together as a family, “Magnify the Lord with each other. Exalt His name together.”
Psalm 34:4 Encourages Spirit-filled Relationships with our Christian Brethren
In our churches and across our churches, God we pray for a Psalm 34:3 spirit in our relationships with each other. That we would look at each other in a sense on a daily basis. And whenever we interact with each other that we would say in our hearts. “Let’s magnify the Lord with each other. Let’s exalt His name together,” and we pray, oh God, that your name would be exalted in our community. God may your name be exalted and magnified in our marriages.
Pray that over every marriage represented in those who are listening right now, every marriage that comes to our mind, God we pray Psalm 34:3 over it. We pray this over marriages, over families, of believers. God may Psalm 34:3 just emanate from homes, glorify your name. Exalt your name through homes that are magnifying you together. God we pray this over our churches. Help us to magnify the Lord with each other.
Help us to exalt your name together. God we pray this across churches, guard us, deliver us from disunity in the church that doesn’t magnify your name, that doesn’t exalt your name together in your church. God help us to live out Psalm 34:3, as your people in our relationships with each other.
Praying for the Mahra People
That the world might know, just as you said, Jesus and John 17, “That the world might know that the Father has sent you.” That the Mahra people of Yemen who are totally unreached by the gospel, we’re a hundred thousand of them. That they might be reached. That they might know that you are magnified, that you are exalted. God bless our relationships as brothers and sisters in Christ in every area, so that your name might be exalted. So that the Lord might be magnified in the world among all the nations. We pray in light of your word in Psalm 34:3. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
