Magnify The Lord

O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.

Psalm 34:3, King James Version

What does it mean to magnify the Lord?

To magnify something is to make it bigger in your sight. You cannot make God bigger than He is. But you can make Him bigger in your eyes than your problem.

That is what praise does. When you magnify the Lord, you take your attention off the bill, the diagnosis, the delay, and you put it on Him. The problem does not disappear. It simply takes its right size.

The phrase comes from two places in scripture. In Psalm 34:3, David calls out to the people around him, O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together. And in Luke 1:46, Mary, young and pregnant and facing whispers, opens her famous song with these words. My soul doth magnify the Lord. The church has called her song the Magnificat ever since.

Notice who is doing the magnifying. Not my mouth. My soul. This is praise that starts on the inside.

The scriptures inside this song

Almost every line of Magnify The Lord comes from the Bible. If you are leading worship, these are worth reading aloud before you sing.

His mercy endureth forever. Psalm 136 repeats this line twenty six times, once for every verse. Israel sang it as a call and response, and it still works that way today.

His mercies are new every morning. Lamentations 3:22 and 23. Jeremiah wrote it while his city lay in ruins. That is why it means so much. It is morning praise from a man who had every reason not to sing.

World without end. An old phrase from Ephesians 3:21 in the King James Bible, and from the doxology many of us sang in church as children. Glory be to the Father, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

The Lord who heals. In Exodus 15:26 God gives Himself a name, Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that healeth thee. The bridge of this song is built on it.

What the song is about

Magnify The Lord is a morning song. It begins with a decision. I will praise You. Not because the day is easy, but because His mercy has not run out. It moves from the singer to every people and nation, then down into the quiet place where we carry our pain, and then back up to glory that has no end.

The chorus is short on purpose. Four lines, easy to learn the first time you hear it, easy for a congregation to carry long after the band stops. Magnify The Lord was written as a morning song, and it works best sung early. Daalu by Michael CU is out on 3 November 2026.

A morning prayer of praise

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Magnify The Lord lyrics