Page 9 - BACK TO BETHLEHEM

call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
I went out full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why
do you call me Naomi, since the LORD has witnessed against
me and the Almighty has afflicted me?” Now if you have an
NIV or a New 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
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