Good Morning Gorgeous,

It’s a brand new day. A fresh new start. A new day to rise and rest. Yes, both rise AND rest.

You can rise knowing you serve the Lord God Almighty who is all powerful and able to work all things together for your good.

You can also rest today knowing that the Lord God is Almighty and both able and willing to keep His promises toward you.

We can faithfully get out of bed today and move forward into the spaces that He has called us to because He is Mighty and Faithful to do all He has promised. His faithfulness and His ability to carry out anything and everything just as He has promised allows us to rest under His care.

There are instances in the Bible where God is given a name by someone who experiences Him in a way that causes them to name Him based on the new revelation.

An example is Jehovah Nissi- Moses said, “The Lord is my banner.” Moses gave this name to God as the Lord showed up as His protector and banner. The One that He could call on and trust in all seasons.

And Hagar named God too. El Roi: The God who sees me, when He met with her in the wilderness during her darkest hour.

Other names God establishes by naming Himself. He personally visits with His people and states who He is! This is so so powerful because when God does this, He is telling us- This is Who I AM. You can trust me to carry through with who I say that I am. And He establishes Himself as El-Shaddai early on in the Bible. He tells this to Abraham first in Genesis 17.

What is so interesting is He appears to Abraham and establishes this name after a looooong period of time has passed since God first gave Abraham a promise and the promise is still unfulfilled.

Here are a few of the times God has spoken the promise to Abraham. His name was still Abram.

Abram has been waiting for the Lord’s Word to come to pass in his life for over 25 years and still no signs of the Lord’s movement!! During this time, God has met with Abram several times and keeps telling him that he will be the father of many nations, that he would have more descendants than stars in the sky, his descendants would be more nunerous than the grains of sand, and that his wife would bear a son. Abram has heard this from God for 25 years! And NOTHING has happened. No baby. No signs of life in Sarai’s womb, and now they are both very, very old.

So not only has he been waiting for decades to see God’s promise fulfilled, but now what the Lord has promised has become physically impossible. Sarai and Abram have been waiting and waiting for a son. In the beginning Abram was full of faith and when God said to leave everything behind and to a new land that He would give to him and his ancestors, Abram went. There’s no evidence that Abram questioned the Lord or wondered how it would all turn out, God said “Go” and Abraham went. What faith!

But his faith would be TESTED…..Abraham was given the promise at 75. And at first, he responded with gusto, excitement, and willingness to go wherever God sent him to do whatever God said…… but then the waiting set in.. and the waiting and the waiting….

When he was 86, the waiting became too much to bear. Did God really plan to fulfill His promises? Did Abram misunderstand the Word? Now here we are over 10 years since the first promise, and there was still no baby. His wife Sarai cooked up a plan.. a CRAZY plan! Abram at this point was to take her servant as a wife and have a son with her!

This was NOT the way God promised and it demonstrated a lack of faith from the man who the Lord said, “Abraham believed and the Lord counted it as righteousness.” This same Abraham is taking matters into his own hands now. And that doesn’t go well…. a child is born. God remains faithful even when Abram is NOT.

But now Abram is 99, Ishmael, his son with Hagar is 13, and it’s been a challenge to stay grounded in faith. The promised baby from Sarai hasn’t been born, yet the Lord has spoken this amazing promise over and over and over again.

God visited Abram AGAIN and THIS time, opens with WHO He is…… He tells Abram, He is God Almighty. And invites Abram back into covenant with Him.

He reveals Himself as the Almighty God who can do ANYTHING, and then gives Abram a chance to respond by calling him to live faithfully and blameless. He is saying, “Abram, do you realize this is who I am. Almighty God. Come back into faithful relationship with me. I still have a promise to fulfill in your life.”

God reaffirms His promise, tells Abram that Ishmael was NOT the promised son, that God still had plans to fulfill the original promise.

And a covenant is made. Abram and Sarai recieve NEW names. From now on they shall be called Abraham and Sarah. And Abraham is to mark the covenant with circumcism for himself and his household.

Abraham once again acts in faith, obeys God, and soon after is visited once again to recieve Word that Sarah will indeed have a baby by next year.

And she did! Issac was born to Sarah when she was 90 years old and Abraham was 100!

Friends, the Lord is El-Shaddai, God Almighty! He can do the impossible. For nothing is impossible with the Lord!! He is the One who speaks and planets appear and align. He can form and fashion Universes with a Word. He is ABLE to work in your life in mighty, mighty ways!!

You may feel like you’ve been waiting on your promise forever.

You may have stumbled along the way like Abraham and Sarah trying to help God out.

You may have picked up some battle wounds and some not so proud moments.

The GOOD news! GOD IS ALMIGHTY!

He will fulfill EVERY promise He has spoken. And even when it seems like its taking too long, He is STILL FAITHFUL..

And He has left us with this promise in Revelation along with the same name: Almighty One. It also feels like it’s taking forever for His return. But Just as He fulfilled His Word to Abraham and Sarah, so too will He fulfill every Word spoken in the Bible. He is the One who is, and was, and is still to come!

He is moving in your life even when you can’t see it.

He is aligning and shifting and moving for the good of those who love Him..

As you repent of the ways you’ve taken matters into your own hands and invite Him back in to finish writing your story, Jesus will faithfully continue to restore, redeem , and make beauty from ashes.

Dear Heavenly Father,

Praise to You, Almighty God!!! You are faithful and can be trusted to carry out your promises to us. Thank You for revealing Yourself as El-Shaddai, God Almighty. We place our trust and faith back in you today.

In Jesus’s name, Amen..

Blessings and fulfilled promises,

(Vanessa Lynn

• 

•