Page 7 - Back to Bethlehem

American Standard Bible, you will notice in the margin for the word
“Almighty” that it says “Shaddai” or “El Shaddai”. The Hebrew
word for God in this translation is “El Shaddai”.

What does the word El Shaddai mean? Let me paraphrase
it. It is one of the most marvelous titles of God. It is the word that
means “the God who is more than enough; the all-sufficient One”.
Isn’t it an amazing thing that Elimelech and Naomi go away because
God and Bethlehem was not enough? And when she comes back,
she says, “I have come to know God as the God who is more than
enough; the El Shaddai.”

All of that suffering that God allowed in the land of Moab,
all of that hardship, the tears that they faced, the graves that they had
to go to, all of that was designed to show them that God is more than
enough. Sometimes we might feel like when we are away from
Bethlehem, that maybe God hates us, and He has washed His hands
of us, and He is just standing there with a big rod waiting to beat us
because we are away from Bethlehem. But it is not that way at all.
What God is doing instead is engineering our situation and our
circumstances so that we will finally come to the place where we
know He is enough.

When we come to the place that we call Him El Shaddai, we
will come crawling back to Bethlehem. And when we come
crawling back to Bethlehem, we have crawled over the threshold
which is the beginning of a life that is an oasis, a life that is filled
with joy and relationship and produces a Savior for the world. That
is why God does that in our lives. Every forward step in your life in
helplessness is a forward step in the knowledge of God and in the
knowledge of His Word.

The most victorious moment in any Christian’s life is the day
he got saved because in that day he was nothing and Christ was
everything. So the whole Christian life is nothing more than going
back to what we were when we first got saved, and as we have
received Christ we are to walk in Him in that same way. So, we
grow backwards to the cradle.

Let’s go back to Bethlehem….