What’s in a Name?

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” (Exodus 3:13-14a NIV)

How many names of God can you list off the top of your head? When I pray, I tend to call on my “Heavenly Father” and “Lord God” and end, of course, in Jesus’s name. I’ve been going through a devotion that prays through 30 names of God in Hebrew. It always floors me how deep the names of God can be in other languages, especially that spoken by a Chosen people. I also like to say the names in Hebrew because it reminds me of the gift of Tongues.

The names that have struck me most right now are those of adoration. I don’t know if I ever really go into a mode of adoration when I pray, and I think serving on worship team the last two weeks has put that thought front and center in my mind. Sunday morning worship for me is about praise and adoration, singing to an audience of One who deserves it. Most often for me right now, prayer is a cry out to God to help me through something; calling out in adoration isn’t necessarily something I do outside of Sunday. But singing and praising God lifts spirits, and maybe in those times that’s all I need to do.

Here are a few of the names of God that make me want to sing out in adoration:

El Emunah: The Faithful God

Elohei Tehillat: God of my Praise

Elohei Ma-uzzi: God of my Strength

Ben Elohim: The Son of God

El Roi: God Sees Me

Elohim: The plural name of El, referring to the one true Creator God, Divine Deity

Just take a moment to sit and ponder what those names mean to you. For me, God’s faithfulness and strength floors me because of how incomplete my own is. He is more than worthy of all praise, not just because He can see me, but because he loved me enough to send his Son for me. Elohim. How fitting in that he is Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

God is who He is. He encompasses all these attributes and then some, and we in our finite humanness can really only comprehend them one by one. That’s why I love how God describes his own name when Moses asks him what he should be called. God just is, and he is so worthy of my adoration.

Miel can be reached via email here.