Posts Tagged ‘Webster’

Honor, Glorify, Magnify!

What do you do/say to honor, glorify and magnify the Lord? What have you witnessed in others that honors, glorifies and magnifies Him? You may be surprised to discover the answer to those questions today? Stop for a few minutes and answer this question: “How do you show honor and glory to the Lord… walk through it, describe it in detail, and demonstrate it.”

Most people that I have asked to do this exercise, depict prayer, singing with hands lifted, and talking to others about God. Those are very safe “churchy” responses. They are not wrong, but very typical. You will be blessed to discover this side of praise today.  Let’s look at the definition of the key words for praise from Webster’s dictionary.

Honor: “a showing of merited respect; esteem shown to another; accompanying praise; profound respect mingled with love and devotion.”
Glorify: “bestowing honor, praise, and admiration; gratification; exaltation; a spot of light.”
Magnify: “to cause to be held in greater esteem; to increase in significance; to intensify; to exaggerate; to enlarge in fact or appearance”.

Doxadzo is the Greek word for the facet of praise we are focusing on today. The definition of doxadzo: “to think, suppose, be of opinion, to praise, extol, magnify, celebrate, to honor, do honor to, hold in honor, to make glorious, adorn with luster, clothe with splendor, to impart glory to something, render it excellent, to make renowned, render illustrious, to cause the dignity and worth of some person or thing to become manifest and acknowledged”. Now that you have read and processed that definition, how do you think we show this kind of praise… upward or outward?

Before I began studying to do this series, I would have said that praise is always upward. That is how we praise! That is what I have witnessed! But, how do you feel now?

Angels were created to praise the Lord. They and the elders sing around the throne all day and night, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God almighty, who was, and is, and is to come”, Revelation 4:8. Does He really need you to do that too? If you look at the definition for doxadzo, where do we need to “make renowned, render illustrious, or cause dignity and worth to become manifest”? Heaven already knows… all of earth does not!
Doxadzo is used 62 times in 54 scriptures in the New Testament and it is all transliterated to the word “praise”!

Look up these scriptures today and “magnify”, “honor”, and “praise” Him the way God intended… outwardly!
1 Peter 4:11, Matthew 5:16, 1 Corinthians 6:20, Galatians 1:24, Revelation 15:4 all contain the word “doxadzo” and speak of “outward” praise. Look them up, replace the word praise for the meaning of doxadzo, and manifest them today in an outward way.

Magnify, honor and glorify (doxadzo) Him outwardly today! People will be blessed… and it will result in honoring, glorifying and magnifying the Lord…

Praising (doxadzo) today…
Kathy