Episode Details

Through studying the names of God, we understand our God is a personal God. In the past 9 devotionals, we’ve seen 10 names and we now know so much more about our God.

As YHWH, God has revealed himself to be so near that he’s our very breath.
As Adonai, God reveals that he is our Master, and therefore responsible for our care and our protection.
As Elohim, God reveals he is our Creator who continues to create and make us a new creation even today.
As El Shaddai, God reveals he is the Almighty one whose hand is in everything.
As Yahweh Rapha, he tells us we can count on him to be the LORD who meets us in the bitterest of places in life and heal us.
As Yahweh Mekaddishkem, God makes us forever good enough by calling us his own, making us holy and then teaching us to rest in him.
God has revealed himself as a Shepherd, caring for his sheep.
Through Jesus, God is revealed as Abba, Papa.
Then Jesus goes on to call him Holy Father and Righteous Father.

We now have 10 names for God, each that reveal his character, his power and his heart towards us. Have you been using these names in your conversations with him? Have you been calling on him by specific name according to how you need him to show up for you? He promises to respond.

Now, we go even deeper. Beyond these 10 names, we read of dozens of other names given to God by people in the Bible who have had a personal encounter with him. The names they give God define how they’ve met him and what he has done for them. And my friend, if God did something for them, he can do something for you. What he did then, he can do today. We’re in relationship with the same God of the Bible.

In Malachi 3:6, God says, “I am the LORD, and I do not change.” God showed up for people personally in the stories in your Bible, and he can and will show up for you personally now.

Remember that as we study the names of God given by other people in scripture – he’s revealing what he did for them personally and what he can do for even YOU personally. He is the same God and he hasn’t changed. He has a personal encounter waiting for you too.

One person in scripture who had a very personal encounter with God is Hagar. Yes, a woman. In these times, a woman was a second-class citizen. She didn’t have rights. She didn’t have her own life. She was completely dependent on the man of the family to care for her. And for a woman, if there was no man to care for her, she was in a truly desperate situation.

Hagar didn’t have a man, she was only used by a man. (Perhaps you can relate.) But Hagar wasn’t only used by a man, she was used by everyone in her entire life to get what they wanted. She was a totally unimportant character in everyone else’s story.

Have you ever felt that way? Like you’re not important enough for your own dreams, your own desires, or your own story. Like you’re stuck in the story of someone else and you’re always just along for the ride. Like the life you live isn’t your own. Like you’re forever forgotten – forever overlooked – forever unimportant.

That was Hagar – that was her life and that was her story. In Genesis 16, Hagar was the slave of a woman named Sarah. Sarah was the wife of Abraham. They were a couple who had been unable to have children, and now in their old age, they had lost all hope for the family they so badly wanted. That’s wasn’t Hagar’s fault or Hagar’s problem – but she became their solution. Hagar’s boss lady, Sarah, decided she would use Hagar to give her the baby she had always wanted. Sarah sent her husband Abraham to sleep with Hagar, and so she became pregnant.

It wasn’t love. It was ownership. Sarah owned Hagar, and Hagar’s body was used to get what she wanted.

This wasn’t Hagar’s choice. It wasn’t her dream. It wasn’t her plan. But it became her life as she was used in someone’s else’s story.

While Hagar is pregnant, Sarah begins to treat he