When it comes to loving God in the way that we should, He lovingly and patiently waits for us to come to our senses. It can take many years of life on earth before we do. Some of us wait until something drastic happens before we experience that one transformative and fantastically spiritual moment when we finally accept His love, and then receive His seed in the innermost part of our beings. Until that moment, we are lost in sin and don’t have a clue how much God truly loves us. It is only when we realize the dreadful predicament that we were in because of the flesh and carnal mind, that we can appreciate who we will become in the spirit. Through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, God makes us a part of His family. His love transforms us! It begins our journey of learning about Him, how He operates, and most importantly, who He will be to us as we learn to lean upon Him completely for everything that we need.
It’s really extraordinary to sit down and think about the reality that God desires to love us, and not only that, He wants us to love Him back. This isn’t a one-sided relationship with Heavenly Father. Something is required of us, and it is that we love God in a way that is holy and true. He deserves this from us. He’s God! He is a Spirit. He is THE Spirit. John 4:24(KJV) tells us, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” We don’t get to do any little thing and call it worship. Neither do we get to say anything about God and call it truth. Heavenly Father has set the standard that governs the way we ought to order ourselves in our relationship with Him, and it should be the joy of our rejoicing to meet that standard, for He has qualified us to do so.
In studying God’s names, we seek to expand our minds—our thoughts—regarding the awesomeness of our Creator, so that our worship, praise, and understanding of God swells to fruitfulness in every aspect of our lives. We can be severely hampered when we get to a point in our relationship with God that we should be more mindful of Him, and yet we’re behaving as though we just got saved.
To know God as El Shaddai is to know Him as the All-Sufficient One, Lord God Almighty. El is a translation of the word ‘God’, and what comes after ‘El’ is the expression of some aspect of God’s character; in this case it is ‘Shaddai’, which means almighty and most powerful.
The first usage of the name El Shaddai is in Genesis 17:1(NKJV). It says, “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless.”” God identified Himself as the Almighty God, El Shaddai. We have to remember that during the time in which Abraham lived, people worshipped many gods and were quick to erect a statue of an idol god made of gold or some other substance. They worshipped the creation and not the Creator. When God identified Himself as El Shaddai, this painted a picture for Abraham of a God that was like no other. He is a God that is strong and will be to His people what they need Him to be.
In Genesis 28:3 (NKJV), as Isaac was announcing the blessing over his son Jacob, he said, “May God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may be an assembly of peoples; and we must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” Here again, we see ‘God Almighty’ in His sovereignty to bless and prosper those that worship Him in spirit and in truth. After Jacob had received the blessing of his biological father, Isaac, God also blessed Jacob and changed his name to Israel. We can see this in Genesis 35:11, where Heavenly Father said to Jacob, “I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body.”
God demonstrates His power and willingness to cause His people to be fruitful and prosperous beyond their greatest imaginations. To Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, El Shaddai expressed the character of our Heavenly Father that meant for them a supreme level of strength and faithfulness. They knew Him to be a Father that would supply the kind of help that no other could supply; for He can do what no other can do. God, through His awesome power, demonstrated that He was their sufficiency, and that they could surrender their cares, their own agendas, their hopes and dreams completely over to Him, because He was able to provide totally and completely for them.
There have been tons of studies on the names and titles of God, but this knowledge in and of itself will not be effective if we fail to see the correlation between how we view God and how we respond to Him. Again, we must remember always that we are building our relationship with Heavenly Father through our blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 13:12, the Apostle Paul said, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” Everything that can be known in our lifetimes is known in part. We don’t have the whole picture and won’t have it until we see Jesus Christ face to face, but we’re learning and expanding with every piece of spiritual truth we receive from God’s Word.
This knowledge helps us to see Him more clearly for ourselves, and sisters and brothers, this is so incredibly important for us, especially as the times become more perilous. God has given us His Word for individual instruction in righteousness. The only person that we can depend on truly is the Spirit of God, but we have made the humongous mistake of making gods out of people and things; this is one of the reasons why so many have become disappointed and let down by people of Christian faith. We expect them to be more than human, and they are not. They are just people, like we are, endeavoring to surrender and allow themselves to be led of the Lord. Some of us cling to spiritual leaders, preachers, and teachers and are worshipping them as if they were all powerful and all mighty. This is very wrong, and we have to get it right. We must be very careful not to idolize another human being, but work as diligently as we can to learn and study the Word they provide so that we can develop our relationships with Jesus Christ personally.
There is one God, and the only way to get to Him is through His Son, Jesus Christ. If we’re getting this wrong to any degree, our lives will come to a standstill, and we’ll not hear from God in the way we expect. We should hunger to know Him more fully, because the more we know about Him, the more we realize how deep, wide, and eternal His love for us is. The Almighty God is our sufficiency. We don’t have to look to the left or look to the right; we can lean totally upon Him to be our everything, for He is El Shaddai, God Almighty!
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“Names of God: Part1- El Shaddai” written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2016. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.