Catching Your Breath
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God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
Background
How many of you know the story of Moses?
Maybe you saw The Prince of Egypt
The Israelites were living in Egypt, but had been made slaves.
The Pharaoh ordered the death of all boys under the age of 2.
An Israelite woman, who had 3 children, hid her baby boy to save him.
She made a waterproof basket and put him in the river.
The basket ends up at the feet of Pharaoh’s daughter.
Cute baby—she adopts it.
Moses grows up in Pharaoh’s house, but knows he’s an Israelite.
He does something stupid and has to go hide out in the wilderness, where he joins a family of shepherds.
One day, he sees a bush that is on fire, but not burning up.
When he checks it out, God starts speaking to him, calling him to go back to Egypt and deliver the Israelites from slavery.
When Moses asks whom he should say is sending him, God tells him what we just read.
The LORD
When you see the word Lord in all caps in the Bible, it means that they are translating a Hebrew word.
YHWH
This four-letter word, which a lot of scholars have come to pronounce Yahweh, is the name that God gave to Moses.
Because the Romans didn’t have a Y in their alphabet, they used a J, and because westerners are determined to add vowels to words, many people around the world began pronouncing God’s name as Jehovah.
Yahweh/Jehovah—both these names come from people trying to make sense of these four letters that represent the name God told Moses.
Now, over the centuries, the Jews moved away from using the this name for God.
They started using other titles to refer to God as Lord.
We keep doing this. God is not a name. It’s a description.
They stopped using YHWH because they felt that God’s name was too holy for human lips to speak.
And many people still maintain that attitude—that God is this distant being who has better things to do than worry about them.
They feel undeserving to even speak God’s name.
But there is an interesting tidbit about these 4 letters.
In the Hebrew language, YHWH are considered aspirated letters.
You are supposed to pronounce them with a breathy sound.
When you pronounce these letters, you hear your breath.
Which brings up a question:
Considering that the letters in God’s name are the sounds of breath, what if the name of God is the sound of our breathing?
That’s huge.
The first thing a baby does when it enters the world is speak God’s name.
The last thing a person ever does on earth is speak God’s name.
Every person on earth, no matter who they are or what they claim to believe, cannot help but speak God’s name.
Because we were literally created to communicate with God, and the ONLY way to stop speaking God’s name is to stop breathing!
The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
So if we are all constantly calling out to God with every breath, then that means that God is always nearby to help when we need it.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
Have you ever been to a point when there are no words to express how you feel?
You can’t even speak, because you are so overwhelmed?
This verse says that, when all we can do is groan because words can’t come, the Holy Spirit knows what we need and goes to the Father on our behalf. And he cares so deeply that he doesn’t even use words.
He groans with us.
God is PASSIONATELY involved in your life.
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars!
(Play video)
You know how everyone likes to say, “I need to be me.”
You will never be happy until you accept who you were made to be.
You were created to give glory to God.
You can deny it all you want, but when you come to accept that God made you to honor him, that’s when things will change in your life.
You might be thinking, “But I’m so messed up. God doesn’t want me.”
I don’t deserve to talk to him.
With every breath in your body, you are already calling out his name!
Your breath declares his existence.
The stars, and all the rest of creation, declare his praises.
God wants you in his life. He loves you.