Month: August 2023

GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 21 ~ ~ Psalm 69:5,19 ~ ~ “O God, You know my foolishness; And my sins are not hidden from You.~~ ~~ You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor; My adversaries are all before You.”

Tony Evans—The Power of God’s Names

Just as we saw JEHOVAH interacting with Moses and his calling in Exodus 3, we see Him interacting with mankind and His creation in Genesis 2. The Lord JEHOVAH God…..

formed man—vs 7

planted a garden—vs 8

caused it to grow—vs 9

took the man and put him into the garden –vs 15

commanded the man—vs 16

formed every beast…and brought them to the man—vs 19

caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man—vs 21

took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh—vs 21

fashioned the rib into a woman—vs 22

Our understanding of who God says He is and how He reveals Himself is critical. Consider what can happen when truth about His character gets twisted or lost altogether.

In Genesis 3:1, Satan approaches Eve in the form of a snake. Even here we see God’s revelation of Himself as the Lord God JEHOVAH ELOHIM: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.”

Because of this craftiness, Satan sought to deceive Eve by subtly changing God’s name. When he spoke to Eve, we read, “And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, HAS GOD SAID, “you shall not eat from any tree of the garden”?” (Gen 3:1). In removing the name Lord JEHOVAH from before God, satan pulled a sales trick on Eve. He sought to deceive her by HIDING GOD’S RELATIONAL NATURE, and thus the relational impact of the deed he was trying to get her to commit.

With the name Lord JEHOVAH still in the question, satan would be reminding Eve through his own words about God’s position as absolute Master over both Adam and Eve. That’s why he didn’t use JEHOVAH, and even when Eve replied, she neglected to call God by the name He had used to make Himself known! (kind of like now-days, when people say, “the big man upstairs”, which is blasphemous and greatly deceptive.)

“The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden GOD has said, ‘You shall not eat from it, or touch it, or you will die.’” (Gen 3:2-3—notice she added to the command of God….changing His Words. JEHOVAH didn’t say they couldn’t touch it.)

Satan’s goal was to get Eve and subsequently Adam to drop the name JEHOVAH from their association with God. He didn’t mind if they called Him ELOHIM—the great, powerful Creator. Such a God could be a distant being,………..way out there.

When JEHOVAH is brought into the conversation, then GOD IS A PERSONAL, interactive being who made, purposed, designed, and intimately knows both Adam and Eve. Satan was okay with Eve acknowledging God; he just didn’t want her having a personal relationship under JEHOVAH’S authority.

The devil doesn’t mind you or me having a bit of religion. He doesn’t care if we come to church to meet ELOHIM, or if we talk on our jobs about ELOHIM.—–as long as we don’t bring in JEHOVAH.

Because the moment we bring in JEHOVAH, He becomes a personal God with whom we are in a relationship. It’s easier to twist things or add things—as Eve did in adding that they weren’t even supposed to touch the fruit on the tree—when we talk about an impersonal being off in the distance. It’s much more difficult when this JEHOVAH God is right there with us, intimately knowing us, caring about us, guiding us, and carrying the authority as Master over our lives.

GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 20 ~ ~ Genesis 14:22 ~ ~ “Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have sworn to the Lord God Most High (Jehovah El Elyon) Possessor of heaven and earth.”

Dr. Tony Evans from his book, The Power of the Names of God

God will often allow us to be in a situation with no possible solution. This is so we can discover that HE is our solution. He lets us hit rock bottom in order for us to learn that He is the rock at the bottom. He’ll put us between a rock and hard place—a situation that seems confusing, incongruent, and chaotic. And He will often do this when He’s getting ready to reveal something new about Himself to us, just as He did with Moses.

As we saw at the beginning of the chapter, God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush. Moses was out shepherding his flock of sheep, kicking rocks along the mountainside, and looking at the same bushes he’d seen for decades when suddenly, something didn’t make sense. He saw a bush on fire, and yet it wasn’t being burned up. Because of this he went to investigate. Because he went to investigate, he got to know God and His will in a way like none other.

Perhaps something in your life doesn’t quite make sense. Maybe it even seems like a contradiction. It could be a conflict you’re facing, a decision to make, a health or financial issue, a rocky marriage, a wayward child…any number of things. But whatever it is, I want to encourage you…based on the name of JEHOVAH, who is the self-revealing one…to be careful not to simply look at the bush that is burning. Don’t get so mesmerized by the contradiction itself that you miss God, who wants to talk to you through the burning bush.

When Abraham was told to go up the mountain and sacrifice his son Isaac, he could have gotten stuck by just staring at the problem. Sacrificing the promised child of his own inheritance and legacy made no sense. Yet in the middle of that seemingly nonsensical situation, Abraham obeyed and looked beyond the problem, and God revealed Himself to him. JEHOVAH showed up and gave Abraham a ram to sacrifice instead.

When God wants to show you a side of Him you’ve never seen before, He usually does it in the middle of a mess, a problem, a circumstance…a burning bush. Don’t look only at the bush because JEHOVAH is using that situation to reveal something about Himself to you. But remember, God didn’t reveal Himself to Moses until Moses turned aside. Moses stopped what he was doing and turned to see what was going on. Sometimes in the business of life…the tyranny of the tedious tasks that go on day in and day out…we fail to turn aside.

We fail to take notice when God is trying to get our attention. Had Moses failed to turn aside, he might have missed hearing from God about His supernatural plan for his life…a plan Moses could have never come up with on his own.

In fact, when he heard it, he became afraid. He started making excuses about why he couldn’t do what God had said. He put himself down and reminded God that he couldn’t even speak well, let alone speak to Pharaoh.

To this, JEHOVAH replied, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord JEHOVAH? (Exodus 4:11) JEHOVAH is God interacting with His creation at a whole new level.

God made Moses and Moses’s mouth, and now he is interacting with Moses about the use of his mouth. He is directing, commanding, and exercising His authority over His own creation because He is not only ELOHIM, the great and powerful Creator, but He is also JEHOVAH, the Lord, Master and self-existent one.

In Genesis 1:1-2:3, we see God as ELOHIM creating His creation. In Genesis 2:4, God introduces a new name—JEHOVAH–and begins interacting with creation in a new way.

He becomes personally involved with the well being and purpose of His creation through His plan, will and interaction.

GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 19 ~ ~ John 8:12 ~ ~ “Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; the one who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

One of the more challenging concepts that students of the Bible sometimes run into is the seemingly contradictory nature of a changing, changeless God. As I mentioned earlier, God is immutable. He does not change.

We read in Malachi, “For I, the Lord, do not change” (3:6). And in Hebrews, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (13:8). so the question arises, if God doesn’t change, how can He change His mind, as He did with Jonah and Nineveh (Jonah 3:10) or Moses and the Israelites (Exodus 32:14)?

The best way I know to explain what happens when the changeless God seems to change His mind is to look at the verse in James that reads, “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” (1:17)

As we see in this verse, and as we know through the revelation of Scripture, God is the Creator of the lights above—the Creator of the stars and the sun. The star in our solar system is the sun, which gets its source from the Father of Lights. The sun stays hot—it never needs to be heated back up. Over these thousands of years, it has never dimmed.

Yet, despite its changelessness, a shifting shadow is associated with the sun. We call it nighttime. When nighttime occurs, darkness covers half of the earth. As the other half experiences the light of the sun, the half that is turned away experiences the shadow of night.

As James wrote, there is no shifting shadow with the Father of lights. Yet you and I deal with shadows in our lives every day. We experience darkness even though the sun hasn’t changed because as the earth turns away from the sun, we enter into a shadow. The sun is consistent, constant, and regular, but the shadow comes because we move away.

We sometimes experience what we consider to be a change in His mind because as we turn, our distance from God casts spiritual shadows. He hasn’t changed; our experience of Him has just adjusted to our turn.

The Bible tells us that God repented of destroying Nineveh because the people stopped turning away form Him and turned back to Him.

He also repented of destroying the Israelites because Moses turned towards Him, appealing to the intimacy of their connection and voicing a plea based on God’s own character on behalf of the people he was shepherding.

When we adjust to or highlight God’s character and His way, light comes where there once was darkness simply because we’re turning toward Him.

GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 18 ~ ~ Isaiah 6:1 ~ ~ “ In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.”

Tony Evans:

If ELOHIM is God’s creative and powerful name, JEHOVAH is God’s personal name. It’s the self-revealing name God gave when Moses asked, “What is Your Name?”

When we study the name ELOHIM, we study the God who is the Creator, and we can talk about His power, presence, and prowess. When we talk about JEHOVAH, we’re talking about His person, His character.

ELOHIM is the side of God who created the heavens and the earth. JEHOAH is the side of God who related to His creation personally. A person can believe in ELOHIM but don’t know the God in whom they believe (JEHOVAH). JEHOVAH is the God who personally reveals Himself to us, often through the trials and struggles we face.

One of the first characteristics we discover about JEHOVAH is that He is a person. He is the I AM. This is significant because it lets us know we don’t live in an impersonal universe as the evolutionists would have us believe. God isn’t a force who just moves about. He isn’t what we think of when we hear, “May the force be with you.” He is a living and very personal God who has emotions, intellect and will.

Yet, because He is also “I Am Who I Am” He is also a self-existing being. He doesn’t just exist, but rather exists IN HIMSELF.

In other words, NOTHING OUTSIDE OF HIM CONTRIBUTED OR CONTRIBUTES TO HIS EXISTENCE. All of us exist because we were created. We were preceded by parents. We are because they were. I am not because I am, and you are not because you are. If there was no them, there would be no you.

But when God formally introduced Himself to His people and to humanity, he told Moses in essence, “Tell them that the one who sent you doesn’t have to go outside of Himself to be Himself, for He is complete in Himself. “I Am Who I AM” In other words, God is the only truly independent being in the universe because He is the only being who is self-generating.

JEHOVAH’S self-existence includes His self-sufficiency, which reminds us that He is the great eternal one. Since He is self-generating, He perpetuates Himself throughout all eternity. You and I aren’t eternal on earth because we are dependent. But JEHOVAH is independent, so He needs only Himself to exist in the dimension where He lives. He is everlasting.

He is also immutable—meaning He never changes. We are forever changing. We’re getting older. But God doesn’t go through that aging process. He is who He was, and He is who He will be because the great I Am never steps out of the present tense. In other words, He is always NOW.

God can never become irrelevant because He is always current. A billion years from now, God will still be just as relevant as He was on day one because all creation depends on Him. You can’t get much more relevant than that.

I know this concept is challenging to comprehend simply because our linear, finite minds only understand what it means to go from one year to the next and then to the next. We go from here to there, yet God can go from here to there and back again all at the same time. He exists as the great I Am Who I Am.

Another aspect of God’s self-revelation is that He isn’t necessarily who we want Him to be. He is who He is, not who you or I want Him to be or choose to define Him as. So if you’re going to know who God is, you’ll have to let Him define Himself simply because He is not “I am who you say I am”

He is JEHOVAH, YAHWEH, YHWH, THE LORD—I AM WHO I AM

GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 17 ~ ~ Exodus 3:6 ~ ~ “Then He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.”

Excerpts from Tony Evans’s book, The Power of God’s Names”

(God is speaking with Moses from out of the burning bush in the desert where Moses has been keeping the sheep of Jethro, his father in law for about 40 years)

In my “Tony Evans’s translation”, Moses says, “Okay, God, so You want me to go down and tell Pharaoh that he’s supposed to let Your people go. I get that—-sure. But when I do, people are going to start asking a lot of questions, like “Who died and made you boss?”

Moses was concerned about what Pharaoh and the Egyptians would think and do, and he was also concerned about how the Hebrew people would respond. As we read in Exodus 3:13, Moses came out straight with his concern. “Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is his name?” Then what shall I tell them?” God’s reply is succinct:

“God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I AM has sent me to you,”

God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.” (Gen 3:14-15)

This name is especially important—and not just because of the number of times it’s used. JEHOVAH (“I AM WHO I AM”) is important because God Himself is telling Moses—essentially His chosen people of Israel—that this is who He is. In fact, this name is so sacred in Jewish culture that the Jews don’t dare even speak if for fear of breaking the prohibition against taking the Lord’s name in vain. Therefore, in time, we lost touch with the correct pronounciation.

Even when the scribes who copied the bible came upon this sacred name of God, they silently read over what they had just copied without pronuncing His name.

The four consonants in this self-revealing name of God form what is called the tetragrammaton. In fact, the literal translation of the word “tetragrammaton” is simply “the four letters”. They are the Hebrew letters yud, hay, vav, and hay. The combination of these consonants is derived from a word that means “to be” Because all four letters are consonants, the vowels from the Hebrew word for Adonai were later added in order to help pronounce His name.

Initially, this rendering of God’s name YHWH was YAHWEH, which comes from the God-given YHWH, meaning “I am the existing one” and on another note, when you come across Lord or God written in all caps you can know that it’s a translation of the Hebrew word YHWH (YAHWEH, OR JEHOVEH)

God has so many names, each reflecting specific character qualities and attributes; it’s important to know just how He is revealing Himself in the particular passage you’re reading. We can’t comprehend Him in His entirety, but we can learn more through a greater knowledge and insight into which name God is using to reveal Himself.

Psalm 8:9

O Lord, our Lord, How majestic and glorious and excellent is Your name in all the earth!

GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 16 ~ ~ Isaiah 57:15 ~ ~ “For this is what the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Jehovah, says: “I dwell in a high and holy place,
And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly
And to revive the heart of the contrite.”

Taken from Tony Evan’s book, “The Power of God’s Names”

Prayer:

JEHOVAH, You are worthy of all praise and adoration. You are the God who made the heavens and the earth. You set the stars in their places and hung the moon where it was to remain. You rule over all, and yet you also seek a relationship with your creation.

For that and much more, You are worthy of all praise and worship. I lift up your name—JEHOVAH–as I seek Your face. I honor You as you are seated on Your throne above all. You are the great and mighty God, who raises up kingdoms and subdues nations at Your choosing. In Your mercy, You sustain all life and passionately delight in our souls.

I come before you with a heart of repentance, knowing I often haven’t honored you as Lord and master of my life. You wait for me to come talk to you, to wake up and greet you, or to spend my evenings with you, but I have instead wasted time on futile distractions. You are the relational God, who desires to walk with me in the cool of the day, just as you walked with Adam and Eve in the early days of Your creation. Forgive me, please, for often seeking to walk alone and ignoring the blessing and joy of Your presence.

JEHOVAH, thank You for desiring to be close to me. Thank you for not only being high and lifted up but also dwelling with the lowly and with those who are not of high stature. Thank You for the goodness and depth of Your heart, which pours out love time and again in my life.

Our finite minds cannot conceive of the infinite God. All we’re able to grasp about our Lord is based on what He has revealed to us. A study of God’s names is a wonderful way to begin to discover who God is. As we consider each name and deepen our understanding of what it reveals, we’ll begin to put pieces together that help us to understand who God is and what He looks like.

In the previous chapter, we explored the name ELOHIM,–The all powerful creator. Genesis1:1-2:3 uses the word ELOHIM to speak of God’s creative genius and awesome power. It’s used to show us His multidimensional, multi-present capacity.

As we progress through Scripture, we soon come in contact with a name of God with which most of us are familiar. It’s also the name most frequently used throughout the Old Testament—6519 times. In our contemporary mindset, it’s God’s most famous name. This name is JEHOVAH.

Keep in mind that the word “god” can be somewhat vague. A number of religions use the word, “god” But in the Word of God, the one true God reveals Himself— His character, His specificity, and His identity—through His names.

To best understand the meaning of the name JEHOVAH, we need to take a look at the life of Moses. In Exodus 3, we find Moses struggling with his purpose. Through a series of events, the man with the promise of a great future has now become a very insecure person. He has blown his privileged upbringing by committing a murder. In his mind, he had been defending his blood relatives, the Hebrews, from the people who raised him, the Egyptians. The Hebrews didn’t identify Moses as one of their own, so when he killed an Egyptian who had been attacking a Hebrew, they simply saw it for what it seemed—a violent act of an angry man.

Moses was rejected from both people groups after this act of bloodshed and feared for his own life, so he fled to the desert and became a shepherd. Forty years of herding sheep in the land of Midian had reduced the once-confident leader to nothing much in his own eyes.

So when God shows up in the midst of a burning bush, revealing Himself to Moses and giving him a vision of his destiny to lead the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, Moses balks. After all, that’s a very intimidating request. In fact, Moses had been doing exactly the opposite of God’s request for the past four decades. He had been running away from Pharaoh, not running to Pharaoh. He had been fleeing fro Egypt, not racing to Egypt.

Yet, a spiritual principle applicable to all of us shows up here in Moses’s life. God didn’t set Moses free from the wrath of the Egyptians simply so Moses could be free. God never delivers someone from something just for that person’s own sake.

God’s greatest aim is always His own glory. God’s purposes on earth are for the advancement of His kingdom and His glory. God provided a way for Moses to escape his punishment in Egypt so that Moses could eventually lead an entire race of people out of Egypt to worship God (Exodus 8:1) God never delivers us so that we might forget Him. God always reveals Himself and delivers us so that we might worship and fully know Him.

But Moses balked at the bush, and so we are introduced to the name of God that we’re looking at in this chapter.—–JEHOVAH. Moses, fearful and afraid at God’s grand request, counters to God with a question of his own……….which we’ll find out tomorrow.

GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 15 ~ ~ Psalm 37:7~ ~ “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; ….”

Excerpts from Dr. Tony Evans Book, The Power of God’s Names?”

Your job as follower of Jesus Christ isn’t to try to outwit, outplay or outsmart God…..to try to figure out your personal destiny yourself. God has already drawn the nap of your life, and it’s a GOOD life filled with both a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11) It’s a plan that’s self-perpetuating. You just need to obey Him fully so you can enter the rest He has planned for you.

You don’t need to create it. ELOHIM, the Creator God, has already created it. You don’t need to force it. ELOHIM, the strong one, has already set it up. You don’t need to go find it. ELOHIM the personal and ever-present God, will reveal it to you as you seek Him each day.

Your purpose has your name on it. Your peace has your name on it. Your provision has your name on it. Your well-being has your name on it. Your rest has your name on it. However, keep in mind that Israelites who left Egypt didn’t enter into God’s rest because they wanted to quit before getting there. They wanted to go their own way in the wilderness and not go God’s way. Because of this, they forfeited the rest that was rightfully theirs.

Friends, I don’t want you to miss the rest ELOHIM has created for you. I want you to complete the obedience He has called you to and walk in His path even when it doesn’t make any sense (Proverbs 3:5-6) When you do, you’ll discover that the strength and power that come from an all-powerful God—ELOHIM—can do things for you that you couldn’t even have imagined.

I love the passage that tells us God will take care of everything when we’re surrendered completely and obedient to Him. We read,

“It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors; for He gives to His beloved even in his sleep” Ps 127:2

You can sleep peacefully at night because you are God’s beloved—you have aligned yourself underneath His lordship and comprehensive rule—and He is working while you are snoring. He can handle the issues of your life, make the connections and intersections you need, and give you wisdom to make the choices that will get you closer each day to the fulfillment of His will—if you will but let Him by living a life of surrender to Him.

ELOHIM can make something out of nothing, like He did at creation. He can empower it to grow into something grand even when nothing appears to be happening at all. He can do that in you.

He can bring order out of chaos, like He did at creation,. He is a great name because He is Almighty ELOHIM, the great and powerful. He can do that in you also.

GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 14~ ~ 2 Cor. 5:21 ~ ~ “ He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Since the Father is so holy, He cannot even look upon sin. Jesus exchanged robes with us, so the Father could see us through HIS perfection—HIS robe.

That’s why the Father could not look upon Him when He was on the cross, because He had OUR sinful robe on at that time, while He was taking the punishment for OUR sin.

Therefore, since He became sin for us (2Cor 5:21) the Father could not look on Him,…….that is, on OUR sin that He had taken on FOR US.

Continuing with excerpts from Dr. Tony Evans book, “the Power of God’s Names”

Tony says:

As we begin our dive into the deep waters of God’s names, you might be saying, “that’s great, Tony. I’ve learned some Hebrew. Nice. But really, what does that have to do with me in my home today with noisy kids and arguments with my mate?” Or if you’re single, “what does that have to do with the lonely nights or the search for personal significance? What about y finances? My health?”

Friend, it has everything to do with all of that. Read Genesis 2:1-3.

“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His word which God had created and made.”

On day one, God created. On day two, God created. On days three, four, five, six, God created. After He created on each and every day, He said “That’s good. It’s good.” God left the creation of mankind for the sixth day so that mankind wouldn’t have to live in darkness. He waited until all of His creation was ready to receive man, and then He made him.

Finally, He gets to the seventh day and says, “That’s very good.” Up until that time, He had said things were good. After He created man He said the creation was VERY good.” then He rested, which is interesting because He had just spoken it into existence. So when we read that God rested, we shouldn’t think He got tired and quit.

Rather, this means He was finished and had nothing left to do. He had completed what He had set out to do. That ‘s when He sanctified the seventh day. To sanctify something is to set it apart as unique and special. He declared His day of rest to be unlike all of the other days Keep in mind that He didn’t sanctify the workdays. He sanctified the rest day.

He didn’t sanctify the day He was getting everything ready, doing all His stuff, and bringing everything into existence. The day He declared as special was the day He chose to rest. In fact, God carries this concept of rest throughout the Old and New Testaments, relating it to other things as well.

In the Old Testament, not only did God say to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, but He also consecrated the seventh year as a sabbatical year of rest. The Israelites were instructed to rest the land from farming every seventh year (Lev. 25:3-7) God also declared every forty-ninth year (seven multiplied by seven) to be a year of jubilee—a restoration of order through the implementation of the Sabbath principles of rest and freedom (Lev. 25;8-17)

In the New Testament, we’re never instructed to keep Saturday as the Sabbath day of rest. In fact, in the New Testament we read that we’re not to allow anyone else to legislate our days for us. (Colossians 2:16-17)

Typically, we experience a day of rest on Sunday during the Church age, because that’s the day Christ was resurrected from the grave. Regardless of the day, the principle of the Sabbath rest continues up until now. In the book of Hebrews, God lays out for us the principle of rest, particularly linking it to the work of Creation. We read,

“He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.’” (Hebrews 4:4) Moving ahead to verses 9-11, we read the personal application for us today:

“So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God for the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore, let us be diligent to enter that rest.”

When God finished everything He needed to do to create the worlds and all they contain, He was able to rest. The reason He could rest was that he infused His creation with the ability to reproduce.

For example, He gave the flowers seeds so they could be self-perpetuating. He gave the animals the desire and ability to reproduce. He assigned tasks to the insects and birds of the air to assist in cross-pollination for the continuation of vegetation. And when he created man and woman, He instilled in them the miracle of birth.

God only had to create once. So when ELOHI created the worlds, He built into His creation the capacity for reproduction for generations to come.

God is telling us through this passage in Hebrews 4 that He has likewise established a rest for us. First, he created a rest for the people of Israel. It was called the Promised Land. In the Promised Land, others had already dug wells, built buildings, and cultivated the land. While the Israelites were in bondage in Egypt, God was preparing a place for them. They simply had to walk into it and enjoy it.

And now, God has a rest prepared for you. IF YOU BELONG TO JESUS CHRIST, you are a part of the people of God. As a member of God’s family, you can enter into the Sabbath rest He has for you. It’s called a Sabbath rest because it’s already completed.

Rather than trying to make God do something for you, you can rest in what God has already done. He has already prepared works for you to do so that you night walk in them. You don’t have to scheme, manipulate, or wear yourself out trying to live your life in God’s will.

Scripture says, “For we are His workmanship,created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

Whatever God is going to do for you, He has already done. Whatever God has planned for you to do, He has already planned. Whatever God has purposed in your life, He has already purposed.

GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 13—John 14:21 ~ ~ “The one who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will reveal Myself to him.”

HEARING FROM CHARLES SPURGEON TODAY

Isaiah 40:9

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Get thee up into the high mountain”

Our knowledge of Christ is somewhat like climbing a mountain. When you are at the base you see very little. The mountain itself appears to be half as high as it really is. Confined in a little valley, you discover scarcely anything but the rippling brooks as they descend into the stream at the foot of the mountain. Climb the first rising knoll and the valley lengthens and widens beneath your feet. Go higher, and you see the country for four or five miles round and are delighted with the widening prospect. Mount still, and the scene enlarges; until at last, you are on the summit.

The Christian life is of the same order. When we first believe in Christ, we see little of Him. The higher we climb, the more we discover of His beauties. But who has ever gained the summit? Who has known all the heights and depths of the love of Christ which passes knowledge? Paul, when grown old, sitting gray-haired, shivering in a dungeon in Rome, could say with greater emphasis than we can, I know whom I have believed.”

Each experience had been like the climbing of a hill, each trial had been like ascending another summit, and his death seemed like gaining the top of the mountain. From there he could see the faithfulness and the love of Him to who he had committed his soul. Get up, dear friend, to the high mountain.

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JESUS, YOU……………………….

GIVE ME MERCY Hebrews 4:16

ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD John 8:12

ARE THE WELL-PLEASING SON OF GOD Matthew 3:17 Acts 8:37

TURN MY ENEMIES BACK WHEN I CRY TO YOU Ps 56:9

GIVE ME POWER AND STRENGTH Isaiah 40:29

GIVE ME RIVERS OF WATER SO I BRING FORTH FRUIT, SO MY LEAF NEVER WITHERS, AND SO WHATEVER I DO PROSPERS

Psalm 1:3

MAKE IT SO I WON’T BE CONDEMNED BECAUSE I TRUST IN YOU,

CREATED ME AS YOUR WORKMANSHIP CREATED FOR THE GOOD WORKS THAT YOU HAVE PRE-ORDAINED FOR ME TO DO Ephes 2:10

CAN DO EVERYTHING AND NO PURPOSE OF YOURS CAN BE THWARTED. Job 42:2

GOD’S WORD FOR AUGUST 12 ~ ~ Job 12:7-9 ~ ~ ““But just ask the animals, and have them teach you; And the birds of the sky, and have them tell you.
Or speak to the earth, and have it teach you; And have the fish of the sea tell you.
Who among all these does not know That the hand of the Lord has done this”

Excerpts from The Power of God’s Names, by Tony Evans

(Yesterday we left off where Tony was saying this:)

Friend, whatever situation you’re facing today or whatever challenge you’re trying to overcome, I want to encourage you to remember the name ELOHIM.

The Strong One doesn’t need raw material with which to work. He doesn’t need logic or tangible solutions in order to accomplish His goal. All He needs is Himself, and all you need is faith in His name that He can do all that He purposes to do.

Too often we get hung up trying to figure out the answer to our problems. Rather than trying to visualize how God is going to straighten out your situation, tweak your trials, or fix your failures, remember His name. ELOHIM can create something out of nothing. He’s done it before, and He continues to do it to this day. After all, He created the worlds just by speaking them into existence.

God’s act of creation makes all of life religious. God invites science to study His creation in order to learn and discover more about Him (Job 121:7-9). Evolution holds that nobody plus nothing equals everything. It ultimately seeks to get rid of God. But watches have watchmakers. Paintings have painters, designs have designers, and creation has a Creator.

All that’s in the universe………beyond our sight…..and all ELOHIM did was SAY something. He merely spoke the word, and the worlds were formed. (I’m glad He didn’t shout.)

So before God shows us His gentleness, His fatherhood, or His grace, God introduces Himself to us as ELOHIM, the great and powerful. He wants to establish right from the start that he is the all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present one.

So far we’ve focused on our understanding of the name ELOHIM in Genesis 1:1. Yet something very interesting and relevant for our everyday lives appears in verse 2: “The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.”

The Hebrew phrase translated “formless and void” is the “Tohu wabohu”. This phrase basically means, “a waste, or garbage dump.” it refers to a location that’s entirely uninhabitable, without form, and void of life.

The earth was a wasteland at this time—but we read in Isaiah that God did not create a wasteland. “Thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited)…Isaiah 45:18.

This passage reveals that God didn’t create waste. Yet, in Genesis we read that the earth was a wasteland. So sometime between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, the earth was messed up—which is exactly what happened when Satan fell. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 tell us that Satan rebelled against God and was kicked out of heaven to planet earth.

Thus we have emptiness and garbage on the earth because garbage has been thrown there. Satan and his demons were cast down, making the planet uninhabitable and destructive (Isaiah 14:12-17)

Satan does exactly the same thing in each of our lives through sin. He takes the beauty of God’s creation—the masterpiece of each one of us—and seeks to turn our lives into wastelands.

This is why you should remember the name ELOHIM and hold it closely to your heart. Scripture tells us that ELOHIM, in His plurality, hovered over the wasteland of life and brought order, redemption, and beauty. He created light (Gen. 1:3), and turned what had been a swampland into a separation of land from water. He made the earth livable. He came into something Satan had messed up and restored it.

One of the greatest lessons to learn about ELOHIM is that in addition to creating something out of nothing, He can take something the devil has junked up and fix it up. He can make it right again.

When Satan attempts to make your life a mess, God’s Spirit can make it beautiful again. When Satan tries to bring death where there once was life, God’s spirit can make you alive again. That alone should be enough to bring hope to the hurting. It should be enough to lift your heart into the realm of faith again.

ELOHIM is a God who can transform a mess into a miracle. He transforms darkness into light. He transforms the desolate, uninhabitable recesses of your soul into places of fertile growth.

And when he does, He wants you and me to reflect Him. Genesis 1:26 tells us one of our primary purposes:

“then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”. An image is a mirror. In the morning when you go to the mirror, your image reflects you accurately.

When God made mankind in His image—in the image of the triune, plural ELOHIM, He commissioned mankind at a higher level than all others of His creation. The flowers were not made to be His image. The beasts were not made to be in His image, the Fish weren’t. Only humanity was given this great and awesome privilege and capacity to mirror God

Every other creation testifies of God’s majesty, but only mankind mirrors Him. You and I have been created to mirror the Divine in History. We are to mirror Him because He stamped His image on us.