God, among other things, is…
…The Creator, Sustainer, Author and Perfector, the Great High Priest, the Sacrificial Lamb, the Beginning, the End, the Son, the Father, the Good Samaritan, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Groom, the Lord of the Sabbath, the Deliverer, the Faithful One, the Fulfillment of the Law, Emmanuel, the Shepherd…
Hearsay? Sure… if you’d like to call it that.
But, I have heard these names and seen them to be true.
In fact, the entirety of this blog is dedicated to those of you who need to hear and see that these names are embodied in one entity: God. It doesn’t matter to me whether you’ve never heard about God or if you have been going to church for 60 years. There is a common denominator among us all. Faithlessness through forgetfulness. Even those of us who have heard and seen the goodness of God forget who he is and who we are in him. We forget. We forget?
That being the case, it does us all a bit of good to hear and see who God is on a regular basis.
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I wonder sometimes if we hear and see God the way he wants us to. We might see him as a all powerful. We might see him as a mean judge. We might see him as a really nice guy.
I wonder what would happen if we saw him as he declared himself to be. I don’t want to get caught up in who everyone else says he is. I don’t even want to get caught up in translations… let’s take his words… literally. (I want to make myself clear to the Reader… the following references are the literal translation of the words in the Bible.)
Who did he declare himself to be?
Well, to Moses he said, “I Am.” To Israel he said, “I Am.” Again, he reminded the unfaithful “witnesses” of his essence by saying: “I Am” (Exodus 3:14, Deuteronomy 32:39, Isaiah 43:10).
When God came to the earth he defined himself in the same manner. He comforted the tattered woman at Jacob’s well when she spoke of the coming Messiah by declaring, “I Am.” He approached his fearful disciples by prophetically uttering the words, “I am.” When the Jewish scholars prodded Jesus in disgust, “Who do you think you are?” he responded with the majestic and timeless words, “before Abraham was born, I am.” (John 4:26, 6:20. 8:58).
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Reader, if the question that raps on your mind is why?, know that God responds lovingly with, “I am.” If you wonder what the answer is to your perpetual sin, his words in response will inevitably be, “I am” (cf. Romans 7:25 NLT). If you’ve been wondering where God is in all the pain and suffering of this dark world, his response will be, “Before and after the pain was here… I am.” If you’re asking how we can follow the law and rules of the Bible, he will whisper, “I am.”
I want to assure you, Reader, that there is no limit to who God is, where he exists, and what he can do. He is the Great I AM. His responses throughout the Bible are consistent. Still, he is who he is; he is who he always has been. Now, in the midst of pain, fear, waiting, guilt, happiness, sin, nothingness, busyness, or disbelief… he is the Great I AM and he always will be.
