Yahweh

So, speaking of starting the new year, we are starting a new series for the year. And this is something we’re going to be doing, and I’m going to tell you, I’m a little intimidated. Okay. I was on Instagram, as I am, and I was scrolling, and an ad popped up, and it was a picture of all of these names of God. It was this black picture, and it had all these gold embroidered names of God. I don’t even know why. I must have been some target audience. It popped up and I didn’t think much about it, and then I saw it again, and what caught my attention was it said “52 names of God.”

And I was like, huh. I don’t ever think about the names of God. I call Him God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, right? Fifty-two names of God. And so I said to Jay, “Hey, what would you think about us, for 2026, studying the names of God every Sunday?” And he’s like, “Yeah, that sounds great.” And I was like, “Okay.” And then I was like, “Are we really going to do this?” And he’s like, “Yeah, we’re going to do it.”

And I’m going to tell you that as I was getting ready to start today’s study, I was really intimidated by it. Not saying studying scripture is easy, but it’s easier to go through a book of the Bible, which we’ve done before, and go verse by verse and study that way. It’s easy to come up with messages that are topical, that feel good, that directly impact our life, where we find ourselves, and how scripture interjects with our life. I feel like that’s my strong suit — topical messages. I’ve got that.

What I realized is that talking about the names of God feels very intimidating, because it’s talking about the characteristics of who He is. And there is such a reverence that comes with that. We’re going to take this task, and we’re going to cover what we can on a Sunday morning with our limited time. I would encourage you to take notes. If there’s a name that stands out, or that doesn’t make sense, or that you want to learn more about, write it down and take your time studying it. Because what we want to capture is the characteristics of who He is. We’re doing this so we can discover the truth of what scripture says and who He says He is.

Why study the names of God

I was telling Jay, I was writing my message and I had written out the names of God. When I write my messages — here are my notes for today, and this is my everything type of deal. That’s how my brain works. And I was like, “Where’s the names of God list?” I knew that I made one, and as I was turning the pages, I found my names of God list. It was just in the back of this notebook.

There are so many names of God, and we’re going to go through and talk about them. It says that He’s our Shepherd, our Lord. It says He’s the Lord of the armies, the Holy One, Emmanuel, Baptizer, Healer, Savior, soon-coming King, Bread of Life, Living Water — all of these things. And what does that say about Him? We want this to be a time that we get to declare who He is. Because when we get a perspective of who He is, then we get a perspective of how we can relate to Him. When we know someone, it helps us to understand how to engage with them, right? And so we’re going to be studying because we believe there’s truth to be discovered about who He is beyond what we already know. The other piece is that we sometimes need to be reminded, and learn to declare the truth of who He is. And this comes from learning and understanding His name.

I was thinking about this episode of The Office. This isn’t an endorsement or not an endorsement to watch The Office. I watch The Office. There’s this episode where Michael — if you’re familiar — they’re looking at his finances, and this guy is telling him he needs to declare bankruptcy. He’s like, “Man, it’s bad. You’re going to need to declare bankruptcy.” And then a little bit into the episode, he just yells, “I declare bankruptcy!” And the guy’s like, “That’s not what I meant. You have to actually do something.”

As I was studying this, that’s what came to my mind: we could know these names of God, and it’s not just to yell, “I declare the Lord of the armies.” It’s, what does that mean? If He’s the Lord of the armies, or He’s the King of kings, or He’s the Savior, how does that interject with my life? Does that make sense? So as we’re going through this, we want to know what happens when we learn who He is. We begin to understand what it means to have a relationship with the One who is holy.

When we don’t know the nature of someone, it can make it hard to know how to interact with them. Think about the most intimate relationships that you have, the closest friendships you have. It’s because you deeply know them. If someone were to say, “Oh, I know Suzie Genin,” whatever you know about me is going to come to mind. If you don’t know who I am, or you’ve heard good things or bad things or whatever, that affects how we interface with someone.

One of my kids often has just a straight face. They don’t necessarily walk around smiling. If you didn’t know them, you would think they were always upset, but half the time they’re just thinking, having crazy thoughts in their head. And one of my daughters plays lacrosse, and one day I asked her, “When you’re running across that field, what are you thinking?” And she’s like, “Oh, sometimes I’m like, boop, boop.” She’s doing the plays in her head, right? But if you don’t know her, you wouldn’t know that. You would think, “Oh my gosh, she’s so focused.” And she’s like, “No, my mind is kind of everywhere sometimes.”

When we don’t know the nature of a person, or we think we know, it will affect how we interact with them. And how much more so when we serve a God — if we don’t know who He is, how do we interact? Why is worship important? How do we approach Him in prayer? Why do we approach Him in prayer? So going through the names of God, our hope is that you will discover something about Him — that we will discover it. Because like I said, I’m kind of intimidated about this. I feel underqualified to be helping bring clarity to the names of God. I just find it that reverent.

Also, I think there are so many times that we will wrongly attribute something to God that shouldn’t be attributed to Him. I was actually having a conversation, and they were talking about something about Jesus, and I was listening — they were just sharing some thoughts with me; they’re not believers — and I thought, “That’s not who He is. That’s not what scripture says.” But I was just in conversation, so I was just listening. There are so many misconceptions about who God is, or what He says, or how He should love, or how He should do things. And really our heart is that we would just bring scripture. What does scripture say He is, and how does that impact us? Or what things have we wrongly attributed to Him?

Not taking His name in vain

A long time ago, there was a deep reverence for the name of God. So if you have your Bibles, we’re going to start off in Exodus, and I’m going to be a lot in Exodus today. It’s the second book of the Bible. And I’m going to start in chapter 20. And I’m going to pray, because I’m feeling a little scattered, as usual. So let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for today. We thank You, God, that You make Yourself known, that Your heart is that You would be revealed to us through scripture, that we would know You intimately and deeply and closely, that Your heart is for us to be in communion, in relationship, in fellowship with You, and in fellowship with one another because of who You are. So we give to You today. We pray that our ears would hear, that our hearts would receive. Lord, give me the words to speak. And we just thank You, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

So a long time ago, there was a deep reverence for God. In Exodus chapter 20 — this is in the middle of the Ten Commandments — it says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.” Now, what I know about this is the first three commandments have to do with God’s lordship over us and how we’re to interact with Him, what He’s expecting of us. And then the second part of the commandments is about our relationship with one another. So we don’t have any other gods. We’re not to take the Lord’s name in vain. We shall not make any idols.

And I think it’s important to understand what He means when He says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.” For so long, in my mind, it just had to do with profanity. We don’t use His name profanely. I just always thought that’s what that meant, for a really long time. We shouldn’t be cussing and using the Lord’s name — and that obviously seems like a “duh,” right?

But as I was studying, what I’ve grown to know is that taking the Lord’s name in vain means attributing something to Him that does not belong to Him. See, God’s name and His character are inseparable. He cannot lie. He will not fail. And He doesn’t change. So when God is giving Moses these Ten Commandments, He’s basically saying, “I cannot be separated from My name. When you speak My name, you’re speaking blessing. So don’t be speaking My name and putting things behind My name that do not line up with the character of who I am.” Because the character of who He is and His name are inseparable.

See, at one time, that was all we had. At one time, when we’re reading this, our words actually mattered and carried weight. And the name of God actually does carry weight. It is so important for us to know that His name and His character are for us to speak truth into situations, over situations — and not to just use His name as manipulation to get something done.

So for so long I thought, “Well, of course I’m not going to use the Lord’s name in vain. Of course I’m not going to cuss.” But I had to come back and think, “Wait, how many times have I attributed something to God, or used God’s name in a way that was inappropriate to His character, but I twisted it in a way to make it convenient for my situation?” Does that make sense?

It matters how we use His name and declare His name, because His name — it says in scripture His name is above every name — is intended to set people free and not keep people bound. The Lord’s name matters so much that we will be held accountable for how we misuse or misrepresent His name, since His character and His name are inseparable. This goes beyond just using His name in profanity. This goes so much further — how we use His name, how we declare His name, how we talk about Him is what we will be held accountable for. Vanity is not just using it, like I said; it’s about attributing something to Him that falsely represents who He is.

The name Yahweh

When we read scripture — maybe you know this, maybe you don’t, and maybe this is where part of the intimidation comes — the Old Testament is written in Hebrew. My oldest sister was studying Hebrew. I lived with her for a year, and I would wake up to her practicing her Hebrew in the middle of the night. We lived in this two-bedroom apartment. I don’t speak Hebrew. And with some of my own learning disabilities, sometimes when I read it, it seems a little intimidating. So the Old Testament is written in Hebrew. The New Testament is written in Greek. And then Aramaic is kind of in there intermittently in the Old and New Testament. So it’s important, when we are looking at the names of God, that we’re actually going back to the original text.

And maybe this is, like I said, where it seems a little bit out of my wheelhouse. I feel like we should have Pastor Larry up here helping us break down the Hebrew and the Greek for us so eloquently, but instead you’re left with me. If you need the correct translations or anything, Pastor Larry’s available for you to speak with after. I’m kind of kidding, but not kidding.

So we’re going to start today, and we’re going to talk about the name Yahweh. The name Yahweh. In fact, the way we pronounce it is not how it was initially pronounced in Hebrew. It was so sacred that by the third century they just stopped saying it, because Yahweh was so sacred. It reflected the intimate nature and relational nature of God. We see He actually uses it, and we’re going to talk about that. But they stopped using it.

So it was initially spelled what we would see as YHWH. And then in scripture — this all matters if you’re doing a study, and as I was studying — whenever God referred to Himself as the Lord, it would have YHWH. But if it was someone responding to the Lord, they would write Adonai, because again, Yahweh was too intimate.

And then as they were translating — if you’ve ever heard the word Jehovah — in English we replace the Y with a J and the W with a V, and then they actually combined the consonants of YHWH, and they put vowels in there, and that’s how they came up with it. Did that make sense? That was rocky, but I think we got it right. So in scripture they combined Yahweh and Adonai to come up with that spelling, and in English we made that Jehovah.

Now why does this matter? Because we’re going to talk about who Yahweh is. Like I said, it was considered profoundly holy, and it still is. But it was how God chose to reveal Himself to Moses. It’s what He made His covenant with, and it talks about who He is.

God calls Moses from the bush

So we’re going to move back to Exodus chapter 3. If you’re not familiar, Moses, up to this point — Moses is born, and basically Pharaoh is like, “I’m going to kill all the boys.” There were some who feared God. Moses’ parents feared God, and they put Moses — if you know the story — in a basket, however they wove it, and they sent him off into this river, and Pharaoh’s daughter finds him. Pharaoh’s daughter takes him and raises him as an Egyptian, even though he’s a Hebrew.

We live in a time where our descent is a lot less of an issue, but it mattered then. He was raised Egyptian, but he was Hebrew. He was supposed to be killed. He was not killed. He was brought into this Egyptian home. So Moses was entrusted to God, but I think Moses might have felt like he was abandoned by his parents, because who would not feel abandoned in some ways to be put in a basket and just left? Not only that, he had no place or identity. The kingdom he found himself in was not his kingdom. It was Egyptian, and he was a Hebrew.

Before we get to this point, he kills somebody. This is what Moses does. He’s trying to do good. He kills an Egyptian because the Egyptian was harming a Hebrew. They find out. He takes off. He’s like, “I’m out of here.” They’re looking for him because they obviously want to have him pay. He runs because of his sin. And he’s rejected by his own people. The next day, after he stuck up for them, the Hebrews are like, “What are you doing? Get out of here,” right? So he’s rejected by his own people, and he leaves. That’s the summary of Moses.

So here’s Moses. He’s tending his father-in-law’s flock. And what I realize as we’re reading this is that no matter how far we feel — or how far the people we’re praying for are — God is always calling out to us. He’s always calling out to us. He’s looking to meet us in the midst of our situation. He’s looking to meet those people you’re praying for in the midst of their situation. When we read stories like Moses’, they’re so complex, yet they’re the reminder that He’s always calling out to us. It’s up to us to choose to respond to His voice.

So we see in Exodus chapter 3 — this is where we’re starting — “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.’ So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’”

See, this is such a lovely reminder that God is always calling us, and He wants to meet us in our everyday places. He wants to meet us in the middle of our job while we’re doing our task. He wants to meet us in the middle of doing our laundry. He wants to meet us in the middle of our groceries. He is calling out to us all of the time, and it’s up to us to choose to say — well, he didn’t even say, “God, here I am” — but to say, “Here I am.” It’s up to us to look and to see where we can find God, instead of always feeling like He’s abandoning us and is nowhere to be found.

Verse 5: “Then He said, ‘Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.’ Moreover He said, ‘I am the God of your father — the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.” See, what we see is that God is to be reverenced and feared — not fear and guilt, but there is a reverence when we come into the presence of God. He’s always approachable. He’s always calling us. And yet there is still a place where we can reverence ourselves to acknowledge who He is.

Verse 7: “And the Lord said: ‘I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.’”

Who am I?

Now what you have to understand is that Egypt was a literal place where people were enslaved. The Israelites were there — the children of God who were in covenant with God. They were enslaved. And we have the Egyptian Pharaoh. And what you have to understand is that the pharaohs and Egyptians had their own gods. Pharaohs perceived themselves as a type of god. So they had their own sort of religion. And where God was calling Moses to was a place of bondage and slavery, hate, darkness. It was a really unsexy place, if I’m going to be real. I don’t think there were many joyful people there in Egypt. They were people who found comfort in their bondage. They were angry because they felt forgotten. They felt the separation. And yet this is where God was calling Moses to go.

You know, when I study, I read the scripture, and usually when I’m getting ready, I like to listen to what I’m going to talk about and preach. And what I realized is, how many times have we been in a situation where we’re like, “God, why would You let this happen?” Fill in the blank. “God, where are You? Why would You let this happen?” And what I realized is there are so many times He’s calling us to the really unsexy place, and He wants us to partner with Him to go into that dark place.

See, when you and I look around, we all see the world in whatever view we see. We can all walk into a situation and be looking at the same thing and be totally honed in on something completely different, based on our experiences, our own life, all of that. But oftentimes I think we’re calling out, “God, there’s this problem. There’s this problem. Why aren’t You changing things?” And He’s like, “Why won’t you go? Why won’t you respond to Me? Why are you thinking this is someone else’s problem?”

And so many times we’re like Moses: “No, I’m good.” Because the reality is, who would want to go to that place? Who wants to go to a place where people are in bondage, a place where people actually were seeking his life? Why would he want to go back? Why would you want to go back to the very things that once enslaved you? He was never enslaved, but why would he want to go back?

When we read scripture, I would encourage us to ask ourselves how it applies to today. Are we holding on to bondages and situations because they bring us comfort? Are there unimaginable, impossible places that maybe God is calling you to go? Are there things that feel like they’re over your head, and you’re just like, “I don’t know. I don’t have the answer to this”? What are the places that we’re refusing to go, or refusing to let God into, because we don’t know what might be on the other side? Because Moses had an idea, but he still didn’t know what was on the other side.

Verse 11: “But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?’” Have you ever considered that? Who am I? Honestly, who am I to be standing up here? Who am I to go and make a difference somewhere? Who am I? Anyways, maybe I sit there too long. “But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?’ So He said, ‘I will certainly be with you. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.’ Then Moses said to God, ‘Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they say to me, “What is His name?” what shall I say to them?’”

I AM WHO I AM

And this is where we find out how God chooses to reveal Himself. He says in verse 14, “And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”’”

Moses obviously doesn’t know the nature of God. He grew up set apart from God, but he was set apart by God without even really realizing it. And when God chooses to reveal Himself to Moses — the unlikely one, the one that seems like he has made so many bad life decisions, who’s literally saying, “Who am I, God?” He probably thinks he knows himself better than God knows him, to some level — God meets him with this: “I am the relational God of covenant. That is the nature of who I am.”

He reveals Himself as Yahweh here — the One who always will be and the One who always has been. Think about that. That is how He chooses to reveal Himself. He doesn’t tell Moses to go tell Pharaoh the God of judgment is coming. He doesn’t say the God the Savior is coming. No, He chooses to reveal Himself and say, “Hey, remind them that I am the God of covenant and I am the God of relationship, and that is the One who’s coming to save you. That is the One who’s sending you.”

And I’m here to remind you that Yahweh, Jehovah, is the God that we start this year off with. A God who invites us into deep, intimate relationship. Those places that we want to keep guarded from Him, the places we want to keep protected — He says, “No, I want to see those, and I want to break you free from the bondage that holds you in there. I want you to walk in the truth of who I say you are, no longer held back by who you say that you are.”

See, this is the God that chooses to reveal Himself. This is a God who’s always faithful. He’s been faithful from generation to generation. He’s been unchanging. He’s unconditional. He’s the One who is and the One who was. Come on, that is some really good news.

Now, have you ever been told, “Because I said so”? Has anyone ever been told, “Because I said so”? That’s the final answer. There’s no other answer. “It’s because I said so.” That is the most frustrating thing at times, right? Sometimes I don’t even know what to say to my kids, and it’s like, “Because I said so. That’s it. That’s the final authority. I said so. This conversation’s done.” So that’s kind of what He just did here. He said, “No, I AM WHO I AM. I’m the One who’s always been. I’m the One that will always be. And that suffices, and that is enough.”

See, this is the God who chooses to reveal Himself as the One who will always be faithfully true to who He is, not who we are. “I AM WHO I AM.” That will always be enough. So as we begin the study of Yahweh, it’s understanding that it is who He is, and that is completely enough. This is the name of God that we can trust. It is holy. It is distinct. It is relational. And it’s covenantal.

And I don’t know if you can relate to this at all, but Moses was trying to make things about his calling and his ability and what he could or couldn’t do. He was coming with so much emotional baggage — understandably. If there was a psychologist, probably a lot of trauma. There was probably a list of things Moses was coming with. And yet it was never about him. It was about the One who was sending him. What Moses needed to understand, first and foremost, was to learn about the One who was sending him, not his own ability, or where he was going to be sent.

Merciful, gracious, and abounding in goodness

We’re going to turn to Exodus chapter 34. There’s a lot of stuff that happens in Exodus. They have gone through plagues. Pharaoh has gone yes, no, yes, no. They escape. Then the children of Israel are all upset because they liked the comfort of slavery better than where they found themselves. And they’ve already had the Ten Commandments once. They no longer have those. He’s going to make new tablets, and Moses is going up to see God. This is where we’re picking up in the story, chapter 34, verse 6.

It says, “And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed” — so this is God proclaiming — “‘The Lord, the Lord’” — and guess what word is used there? Yahweh — “‘the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.’” This is the God.

So He’s saying, “Hey, listen to Me. Yahweh, Yahweh. I am the God who is merciful and gracious and longsuffering, abounding in goodness and truth.” There’s so much that God could have, at this point, come and corrected and fixed. And yet God chooses to say, “I’m merciful. I’m longsuffering. I love you.” He’s not maybe saying “I love you,” but that’s what He’s explaining there. He says, “I’m abounding in goodness and truth.”

The reality is He is wanting to be glorified in our lives. He wants to be glorified in our city. He wants to be glorified in our nation. He wants to be glorified in our families. He wants to be glorified at our workplaces. And this might all seem slightly impossible when you look at whatever circumstances you’re looking at. And yet He’s the God who says, “But I’m abounding in goodness and truth. I’m merciful and longsuffering.”

So the purpose of knowing the nature of God is that when we walk into situations and we feel overwhelmed, or it looks like the complete opposite, we can look to the One and begin to declare, “Oh God, but You’re Yahweh. You’re the One who’s merciful. You’re the One who is longsuffering. You’re the One who is gracious toward me.” And it begins to change our perspective, because that’s how scripture is supposed to work. We aren’t supposed to just look at it and think, “Okay, cool.” No, we’re supposed to say, “Okay, now that I know this about You, it changes my perspective.” And that’s what I hold on to when everything around me is violently changing. When everything around me feels unstable, I get to declare, “But I serve Yahweh, the God of relationship, the God I’m in covenant with.” And that changes our circumstances.

And this is such a beautiful response, and I believe that this is what our response should be. We talked about it last week a little bit — maybe it was Christmas Eve, I don’t know. After the Lord reveals Himself — “Yahweh, Yahweh, I am God” — it says, “So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.”

See, Moses understood the posture of humility, in prayer. He didn’t position himself and say, “I’m no longer worthy. I can’t do it.” No, when God declares who He is, he postures himself in humility, and he responds in prayer and worship. See, that’s what makes worship as uncomfortable or as beautiful as we find it: it postures ourselves in a place of humility, and we just get to declare who God is. That’s what we’re doing when we’re worshiping. We’re just saying, like we were singing, “I love You, Lord.”

He doesn’t need all of these — I mean, there are beautiful songs out there, and all of these chords and melodies. But He just loves when we get to say, “I love You, Lord. I love You, Lord.” I don’t even know the words of any of the songs that we were singing, honestly. We sang “Shout to the Lord.” You went old school. We did sing some old-school songs. But right, worship is just about posturing ourselves and saying, “Yeah, You’ve got this. So I’m just going to bow, and pray, and I’m just going to worship.” And it doesn’t have to be extravagant. It doesn’t have to be great, because it’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about Him.

It’s about the God who is merciful, who proclaims — He proclaims about Himself, not what I think about Him — that He is merciful and gracious and longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth. That is how God chose to reveal Himself after people had turned away from Him. After people had built golden calves and images, because that’s what’s happening in Exodus. After people had basically cursed Him: “God, why did You bring us out here? How could You do this? We were better off in Egypt.” After all of that, He proclaims who He is, and He proclaims, “I abound in goodness and truth.” That is the God we serve.

So Moses makes haste, bows his head toward the earth, and worships. And this is what he says: “Then he said, ‘If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.’”

When Moses refers to Him in this place, where he says, “O Lord,” guess what word he uses? Adonai. Because remember, when it was us referring to God, they would write Adonai — but it’s still what combines with Yahweh to get us to Jehovah. Moses says, “Would You take us, even though we’ve gone far off?” When he says, “We’re a stiff-necked people,” he’s talking about their heart turning away from God. “Even though we’ve turned away from You, would You go with us?”

Praying Moses’ prayer

So I’m going to pray over us today. I still have to work it out, because I have a lot of squiggly lines and stuff, but we’ll probably put it on social media — just a prayer for you. Again, there are so many things you can do, and I feel like it’s so much. So just pick one. But one of the things that I decided is I’m going to be praying this prayer this week, to posture myself with the perspective that I serve a God of covenant who’s abounding in goodness and truth.

It’s basically Moses’ prayer, but I made it into my own. Because when we read scripture, we’re not intended to redefine scripture, but we can read scripture and pray scripture in a way that brings it to life. That’s the purpose of scripture. At least that’s what my mom taught me. I don’t think seminary taught me that. My mom taught me that. If you ever listen to my mom pray, the majority of the time she’s praying scripture. And part of that is that those are the promises of God. That’s the goodness and truth that He abounds in. So when we’re proclaiming scripture, we’re proclaiming His goodness and His mercy and His truth. And that’s what I need over the situations that I’m walking in. Because our situations vary, but we need the truth of God to abound in us.

So this is my prayer. I’m going to pray over you guys, and I’ll write this and we’ll have it on social media. I’ll put it up today. And I would encourage you just to pray it.

Heavenly Father, thank You for revealing Yourself as Yahweh, a relational, close, covenant God. Today we pray that as we find grace in Your sight this week, You would help us to extend Your grace to others. O Lord, I pray that we would be aware of Your presence, and as we go, You go with us. Even when we are stiff-necked, You are with us. Forgive my iniquities, forgive my sins, and take me as Your inheritance, because I belong to You.

Lord, I thank You for each person in this room. God, I thank You that as the Word has gone out, it would bear much fruit in all of our lives — that seeds would be planted and that this word would bear much fruit. God, I pray that there would be a revelation of who You are: Yahweh, the God of covenant, the God who went from not even being approachable, where we had to go through all of these different customs, to being a God who is now approachable, who makes room for us, who desires communion and relationship and fellowship.

God, we thank You that You are such a faithful God, that You are a real and living God. I pray that we would be awakened to Your presence this week. I pray that we would be awakened to the abounding goodness and truth that is found in Your Word. Lord, I pray that we would be awakened to Your mercy and to Your grace. God, we thank You that Your Word cannot return void, because You never lie. You’re unchangeable. You are on a mission for us to know You — to know You deeply, to know You intimately, God. And so, Lord, we thank You that Your Word stands as truth and that You can be trusted.

Lord, we pray for protection around all of us this week as we go through our week. We pray for greater revelation. Lord, I pray that as we either choose to fast, or start the reading plan, or choose to do both — whatever it is, Lord — You would strengthen our flesh, because we know that our flesh is weak but our spirit is willing. So God, we pray that You would give us the hunger, that You would start the fire. Lord, whatever it is, bless our efforts. God, we thank You that we don’t have to walk in condemnation or guilt if we miss a day or if we mess up, but that we get to walk in Your abounding goodness and Your mercy. Lord, we thank You for all of these things. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

And amen. We love you guys. If you need prayer, there’ll be a few people up here that can pray for you.

Transcribed from the message recording and lightly edited for reading.