Archives for October 2012

“AND GOD CALLED . . .”
God called! In Genesis 1, Elohim is doing a lot of what scholars would call human actions (anthropomorphisms). If you really looked, you would see that these are really divine actions. God was doing them before He made us. Then He gave us the ability to do what He could do. Isn’t that beautiful?

God called! That phrase is used 3 times in Genesis 1:

• God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” (v.5)
• God called the vault “sky.” (v. 8)
• God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” (v.10)

“God called” reveals the awesome nature of our God. The Hebrew word is “qara.” It means that God enunciated a specific vocal message. If we were there, we would have heard him speak. He would have said something like:

• “Light, your name is day.”
• “Darkness, your name is Night.”
• “You big open space, your name is sky.”
• “Dry ground, you shall be called land.”
• “Waters, you are seas.”

Look at our God at work! Not doing this for himself … but for us.

• I will give them light so that they will not have to live in the darkness around them.
• I will give them a big, open space like a canopy above them.
• I will give them darkness so they will know it is time to rest.
• I will give them land on which to walk, and seas in which to swim.

But God was doing something else. He was asserting his sovereignty over the thing named!

• “Light, you’re mine!”
• Catch this — “Darkness, I’m the boss of you!”
• “Land, I made you!”
• “Seas, since I’m sovereign over you, I tell you how far to go!”

This is what the psalmist says:
He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name (Psalm 147:4).

He gave this ability — “of calling” to Adam:
[God] brought [the animals] to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

This act was more than just Adam naming them. It was God giving to Adam the authority, along with the responsibility, of being a sovereign over the things that He had created. Wow! He shared that with Adam!

When you name something, you own it!

But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9)

“Called” here is the same Hebrew word “qara.” God expressed sovereignty over the one He named, so He called out to Adam. “Adam, where are you?” He was essentially saying to Adam, “I’m your Lord — sin is not, nor is disobedience, or the serpent, or your own shame.”

“Adam, where are you?”

Oh, that we could hear a loving, benevolent God call out to us when we are disobedient and ashamed and know that the Father’s love is greater than whatever we’re feeling or whatever we have done. If only we would come forth and say, “Abba, I’m here.”

PRAYER: Thank you, Abba, for calling! Thank you for calling to us! Thank you for calling us your children! Be sovereign over us, Father! We give you absolute permission (not as if you needed it) to call to us out of the mire that we find ourselves in…to you! Enunciate a specific vocal message. Call our names! We will come from among the trees, abandon the fig leaves and say, “Yes, Daddy. Here I am because I know that your love is greater than my shame.” Amen.

AS I approached my street, I noticed something in the road up ahead in the opposite lane. Blown by the wind, a twig with several dead leaves scampered across the road. As a car approached the twig, a gust of wind blew it toward the median. The closer I drove, I knew there was something peculiar about this twig. It seemed to have a mind all its own. It had such precision of movement. Then I realized that what I saw was not a branch with dead leaves, but several goslings trying to cross a three-lane road. Attempting to cross together, they would scurry back to the median because of an approaching vehicle.

Where was the mother? I thought.

By this time I had passed my street and hurried to look after the motherless goslings. I looked around for the mother, but she was no where in sight. I couldn’t stand there and watch them get pancaked, so I waved and yelled, trying to get traffic to stop on a three-lane road with drivers exceeding the 45-mph speed limit.

And there I was, like the goslings, running to the safety of the median from an oncoming dump truck that had decided not to stop for woman or fowl. I was unsuccessful at getting the traffic to stop and the birds to cease their back-and-forth attempts to cross the road.

I saw a worker in the distance wearing an official orange vest, so I got in my car, went to him, and told him the situation. Placating a desperate woman, he said, “I’m coming.” I jumped back in the car and raced to be with the motherless goslings. When I returned, they were gone. I looked for furry pancakes in the road, but there were none. Then I saw that they had made it to the safety of the other side, walking in their synchronized fashion like little wind-up toys. The worker came, and I pointed to the goslings scurrying off to green pastures, a lake, and prayerfully geese that would protect them.

When I got in the car, I thought  how crazy I probably seemed to the drivers who whizzed past, disregarding my waving or yelling . . . but I realized that there are a lot of “at-risk groups” (orphans, widows, the impoverished, the gay community, victims of sex trafficking, etc. . .) needing someone who will not mind appearing crazy in order to save their lives.

Millions are lost and don’t know it, trying to get through life without a scratch, not seeing the obstacles aimed at their destruction.

Yeshua showed us how it’s done. He saw us on a highway moving like robots. He came down in the midst of the traffic, metaphorically stood in front of a speeding dump truck so we could cross the road safely to the other side . . . TO  . . .

• A place beside still waters.
• A place where the pastures are green.
• A place where we’re comforted by His staff and rod.
• A place where we shall not want . . . or fear.

PRAYER: Thank you, Abba, that when we didn’t know where we were going or how we were going to get there, you did. There was this huge chasm between us and you, and you did something absolutely crazy to bridge it. You used a cross and your life. No more scurrying to and fro for us. No motherless goslings are we! We have safe footing on Yeshua the Rock, a place where fear does not exist, where a Father says, “You are no longer orphans.  I found you, I saved you. You are mine.”  Thank you, Abba! Amen.