Do You Struggle to Find the Courage to Magnify Christ in Your Life?

Ephesians 1:17: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.”

“Character formation is at the heart of true wisdom; as M. Fox (620) states, ‘Wisdom is a configuration of soul; it is moral character.’”

“I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20).

The word “courage” refers both to boldness and openness. Tie that to the interesting Greek word translated as “exalt,” megalunthesetai. The Greek word starts with the prefix “mega.” The literal meaning is to make large, to make mega.

How do we say that we are making something big? We supersize it. We promote it and publicize it so that it goes viral. In slang, a person or product blows up when it goes big. And you blow up a person’s phone when we call and text over and over. When we want something to go viral, we want it to blow up, but it sounded odd to say we should blow up Christ, yet Paul is saying something like that. Now and always, whether by life or death, I want Christ to be honored, blown up, promoted, magnified, made tremendous, and famous by what I say and do, regardless of my circumstances.

This same word is used in the Greek translation of Psalm 34:3. My wife Tamara and I have Psalm 34:3 engraved inside our wedding bands. It is our call to each other that we had read in our wedding ceremony: “Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together.” (Psalm 34:3.) In our marriage, we want to honor Christ no matter what.