Monday, November 13, 2006

El Shaddai - again

I know that Erika has already talked about what she learned about God as El Shaddai, but it never hurts to revisit and learn more about our God. When God first revealed Himself as El Shaddai, He was making a covenant with Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. You see, Abraham was 99-years-old. Just a bit past fertility (for him and Sarah, who was 89). However, Abraham reconized God as God Almighty, the All-Sufficient One and fell on his face before God! God was Abraham's answer.

As mentioned before, "El" refers to diety and literally means might or power. The root of Shaddai isn't as clear, but Andrew Jukes of The Names of God gives this description, which I think is pretty awesome:

He tells that the root of the word Shaddai comes from the HEbrew word "Shad" meaning a "woman's breast." How did this word come to mean Alimighty in the description of our God? Okay, here's the neat part. When a baby is crying and restless, nothing can quiet it but the mother's breast (Okay, think like a Hebrew woman prior to formula, technology, etc!). Without the mother's breast, the baby starves. The breast provides life and nourishment - power over the outcome of teh child. This is what El Shaddai is for us - He nourishes us, provides life - He pours Himself our for us! "Come unto me and drink," "Open thy mouth wide and Iwill fill it." Even in the Lord's supper we see a picture of this as we "Eat His flesh and drink His blood." What a wonderful picture of Jesus Christ pouring everything out for us!

You see, in Abraham's weakness was God's power shown; He was revealed as Almighty God, the All-Sufficient One. "I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless" (Genesis 17:1).

"'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (1 Corinthians 12:9-10). This is my prayer tonight!

4 comments:

Erika W. said...

I love that. Open up, and I will fill you. That's an amazing thought. If I can be willing and open, imagine the blessings I can receive! Wow!

Hey, great idea with the labels! I hadn't thought of that. I think there's a way to put a "label list" in the sidebar... I'll look into that today.

Unknown said...

If you find out how to do that (the sidebar list) please let me know!!! I'd love to put one on my blog.

Erika W. said...

Claire, is your blog in Blogger Beta? If it's in Beta, go to your template, and select page elements.
Then click on one of the sidebar selections where it says "Add a page element". That will bring up a selection box, and simple enough, select the one that says "labels". That will automatically add the labels to the sidebar. Then you just need to get the labels onto your posts- and you can go back and edit to do that if you wanted.

Unknown said...

Thanks! I just added the labels to my blog!