LIVING WORD DEVOTIONAL
By Pastor Mensa Otabil
Monday 22nd November 2021
THE NAME OF THE LORD
Scripture Reading: Psalm 8
O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth! Psalm 8:9
In our world today, names don’t seem to matter much. However, in the scriptures, names were very meaningful and carried much weight. Careful consideration was given to the process of selecting names. The names of people and locations told a lot about them. God in revealing Himself to us used His names. We therefore want to spend time studying God through His names.
God has no beginning and no end. It is impossible to fully know Him. However, we can learn much about God from the revelation of Himself to us. A study of the scriptures, in both the Old Testament and New Testament shows how God revealed Himself progressively to individuals. From the record of His dealings with people, we discover aspects of His person.
His names are important. Our salvation is dependent on a revealed name, as does our prayers, which have an audience before God because we use a name in prayer. A great deal of the knowledge we have about God revolves around the names we call Him.
His name reveals His nature and His acts to us. By watching what He does, we are able to better understand who He is. From each instance of how He uniquely dealt with different situations, we are able to draw accurate conclusions of how He is like. This leads us to a revelation of a name that suites that revelation of His nature.
There are times that God directly revealed His name to people. He would announce Himself as the God who does a specific act. There are also times that through a discovery of Him we come to know Him better and consequently, ascribe a name that describes what He did. Both approaches have contributed to our growing knowledge of who our God is.
It is a necessary exercise to study the names of God for the benefit of getting to know Him and understand Him better. His name is excellent and worthy of our praise. May our knowledge of Him continually increase as we study His names.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for revealing yourself to us. Help me to trust you at all times and in all situations. In Jesus’ name, Amen
