Microscopic vs. Telescopic Worship

"But there are two entirely different ways of magnifying God, one of which exalts him and the other demeans him. First, you can magnify God the way a microscope does by focusing on something quite small, most often invisible to the naked eye, and causing it to look much, much, bigger than it really is. this is magnification by distortion! This is not how we are to magnify God! Tragically though, that's how many Christians think of God and how they are to worship him. They think that in their lives and in their prayers and in their praise they are causing God to look bigger and greater and more glorious than he really is, in and of himself. Worship is not like blowing up a balloon. God is not honored by human inflation, as if the breath of our praise enhances and expands his visibility and worth. To think that apart from our praise God remains shrunken and shriveled is to dishonor him who "gives to all mankind life and breath and everything" (Acts 17:25).

But you can also magnify God the way a telescope would. A telescope helps people who are small and distant to see something indescribably huge and massive by making it to appear as it really and truly is. A telescope peers into the distant realms of our universe and displays before our eyes the massive, unfathomable, indescribable dimensions of what is there. Only in this latter sense are we called to magnify the Lord."

Sam Storms, For the Fame of God's Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper. p.58

I Want This

Marsden, commenting on the glories of God revealed to Edwards...

"The new sensibilities grew during the spring. As he wandered in the fields, woods, and hills near New Haven for his meditations he repeatedly saw the glory and beauty of God's love in Christ. He experienced an 'inward sweet sense' of Christ's love expressed in 'the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him.' He spent much time reading the love poetry of the Canticles or Song of Songs

..."The words seemed to me, sweetly to represent the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ." Such contemplations would carry him away 'from all the concerns of the world' into 'a kind of vision...sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapped and swallowed up in God.' This new sense of divine things 'would often of a sudden as it were, kindle up a sweet buying in my heart; an ardor of my soul, that i know not how to express.'

What overwhelmed him was two seemingly opposite attributes of the triune God "in a sweet conjunction: majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness."


...I'll have what he's having.

Piper's 5 Convictions of Christian Hedonism

1) The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful.

2) We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead, we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction.

3) The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God.

4) The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared with others in the manifold ways of love.

5) To the extent that we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people. Or, to put it positively: The pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue. That is...

The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

-Desiring God, p.28