El Shaddai - Almighty God

A religious education teacher asked her class if anybody knew what God's name was? One small boy put his hand up. "Miss,miss" he exclaimed. "Yes?" she replied."It's Harold!" he proclaimed confidently. The teacher looked perplexed. "and what makes you think God's name is Harold?" she quizzed. The little boy answered confidently,"Because every Sunday when we go to church I hear them pray, Our Father, who art in heaven. HAROLD be thy name."

 Firstly my apologies if you've heard that one before. There is a point though. God DOES actually have a name. In fact He has many names. You may well ask why many names? Why not just one? Well we need to understand that to us in this generation and culture, a name is just a name but for the people in bible times {and in fact today in many parts of the world} a name carried much with it. A name carries your prestige, your honour and reputation. Even in today's culture we talk about 'give a dog a bad name'. In the first book of the bible a name conveys even more. It has a deeply prophetic significance. When God reveals a name He wants to be known by He is letting us know something about His character. Something about who He is in the very centre of His being.
 So now we come to this term EL SHADDAI. Translated it means GOD ALMIGHTY. While some of us may be more used to such a term being used as an irreverent exclamation it is a term full of meaning and significance. Let me share just a few things here.

 # God often revealed something of His character as a result of a particular experience with someone -
 While an academic study or theological knowledge is of undoubted use it is worth noting that this deepest of religious teaching, that of actually knowing God himself, did not come through education. It was not obtainable only for those with a particularly high I.Q but was revealed to those who had a personal encounter with God. In other words it is relational rather than intellectual. God wants to do more than fill our heads with knowledge. He wants us to know Him and that's what this term EL SHADDAI is about.

 # EL SHADDAI is not limited the way we are limited -
In one particular and dramatic case in the scriptures a man called Abram had an encounter with God and God made a series of astonishing and seemingly impossible promises to him. You see Abram was a wealthy and successful man but for all his money the one thing he could not do was produce a son and heir. It really bothered him and so God told him {remember Abram is in his 90's} that not only will he have a son but that his descendants will form a nation. As if that wasn't enough there would be many kings that would come from this lineage and as if that wasn't enough God told him that every nation would be blessed as a result of it.I mean think about it. Abram is already old and can't even have one child and God is promising him a nation! God was telling Abram to look at the one making the promise and realise that there is no lack of power to achieve this thing with the one called ALMIGHTY.

# We are changed as a result of an encounter with God -
Abram has his name changed to Abraham which means 'a father of many nations'. When you enter into a covenant relationship with EL SHADDAI, The Almighty, you receive a new name, a new future and purpose. A new destiny.

# El Shaddai is the God of an ETERNAL COVENANT -
God promised Abram that He would make an ETERNAL COVENANT with him. In fact elsewhere God confirms His commitment to Abraham's descendants, the nation of Israel, by saying if the mountains are no more and the sun is quenched then my covenant with you is over. In other words God used the most permanent, powerful and immovable things they could think of to reinforce in their minds the permanency of His promises. Recently I was on holiday in the land of Israel. It was an amazing experience to stand in the middle of fulfilled prophecy. For the best part of 2,000 years the descendants of Abraham have been scattered throughout the earth. They have been derided and persecuted time and again like no other people in history yet against all the odds not only had they survived but they were back home in the land that God had promised them in His everlasting covenant. For generations many have dismissed the promises of Israel's return. Others have redefined or alegorised them or tried to claim that these promises were really speaking of the church. Many people, including Jews, have said such a thing is impossible but we have seen it here in this generation. Why? Because God is EL SHADDAI. He is all powerful and there is nothing He cannot do. Time and again we stand amazed at God's power to stand by His word. Even when we ourselves are unfaithful He remains faithful.

# The promise is not always fulfilled overnight -
Before Abram received the promise of a son and heir he went through his own struggles with this. He agreed with his wife to father a child with one of the servant women. This was not God's plan yet God persevered with him and eventually he and his wife had a son, Isaac. How often do we cook up man made ideas to get things done rather than trust God and His timing?
I recall a time around 10 years ago I became very discouraged and frustrated. I believed I was doing what was right and submitted to the will of God yet it seemed I was getting nowhere. here were two things God showed me that night when I looked to Him for an answer and one of them was, "You have submitted yourself to my will but not to my timing". As soon as I heard it I knew full well it was true. I had reached the point where I had embraced the will of God for my life...as long as it's now!{or at least very soon} That's probably most of us at some point or another. We must remember that the God who promises is EL SHADDAI. He is not weak or slow or forgetful. He is the Almighty. The God of unlimited power. He is also the eternal God who sees everything from the perspective of eternity. He knows how best to answer your prayers and also WHEN to answer your prayers.

# Abram believed God could make him a father but not that God could make his wife a mother -
For some of us, trusting EL SHADDAI is easier for ourselves than it is for others. Why is that? I'm not sure but I've seen it numerous times. For some it's the other way round. They trust God to move in someone Else's life but not in their own. It seems some of us can believe for a miracle of healing in someone else's life but not our own.
We like to hide behind naturalistic, intellectual excuses. Perhaps God only heals certain types of ailment. You know the kind that could probably clear up by themselves anyway like a cough or cold. Some of us think that if a problem is genetic then it is an issue for science and that's beyond God's remit. After all doesn't the bible contain all that unscientific stuff about a young earth, Adam and Eve, a flood etc. Then we have the intellectual rationalisations such as 'I believe God uses science, doctors ect'. Well I have no doubt He does but why can't he circumvent all that? After all He is either EL SHADDAI or He is not. What was going through Abraham's mind when he made that decision? What was going through his wife's mind? Perhaps they had tried but then said, 'This is stupid. This isn't working.' Let me say this. If God has said something then it WILL come to pass. This is the same God who spoke the entire universe into being. Is anything too hard for him. Our problem is that our circumstances end up looking bigger than EL SHADDAI. How on earth is that possible?
 If you have ever seen an eclipse of the sun you will know the moon has the ability to entirely block out our vision of the sun yet we know the sun is THOUSANDS of times larger. The reason? We are many times closer to the moon than the sun. Abraham had allowed himself to get closer to his circumstances than to God. He allowed his focus to be centred on what was happening rather than on what God had said. Now before I start sounding harsh here it's worth saying that most of us would have struggled with the issue Abraham grappled with and that brings me to my next point.

# Circumstances can look bigger than God when they are issues very close to our hearts. -
A son and heir was the desperate cry of Abraham's heart. How easily some of us believe God for things which don't touch us but how we struggle when we feel the pain, sense the loss or focus on the sometimes serious consequences if God doesn't come through for us. This is exactly why, I believe, God revealed himself in such a way to Abram. When you go through the next trial of your faith and struggle to believe and act according to what God has told you then take a step back. Hand your circumstances back to God and you will find them, not necessarily small but the God you serve as much bigger. Seeing God as EL SHADDAI has a wonderful habit of putting every difficult situation into perspective.

# Finally, faith is really seen when we move out of the realm of the humanly possible -
 Now faith may well still exist INSIDE that realm. Don't get me wrong but it is most clearly seen OUTSIDE of it. Furthermore I believe God deliberately takes us to a place of the IMPOSSIBLE. He will take us to a place where we CANNOT do it ourselves. God wants us to know Him, not in an academic way but in an experiential way. He wants us to experience him.
The truth is, in this lost and fallen {and broken} world, if God took his restraining and gracious hand off completely we would all perish. Often people ask "If there is a God then why do so many bad things happen?" I think {To adapt a phrase coined by C.S Lewis} that these things are God's megaphone to a deaf world. They shout to us that there IS something wrong. Something very wrong and we cannot sort it all out ourselves. The root of man's trouble is his desire to live in autonomy, Independently of God. It is what has caused all of humanity's suffering pain and death during it's existence on the earth and it is when we come to the place where we realise than and realise that we cannot do everything we are one step closer to an experience of God as EL SHADDAI, God Almighty.

 Shalom...Steve