Say The Name

I’ve been going through some financial struggles lately – that’s been the way my life has gone for a long while now. I have moments when it seems like I can relax and breathe and then I get hit with something else. Then I see the news about those women in Ohio, and I can’t feel sorry for myself. What they went through is too awful to imagine, and my money stresses are nothing in comparison, even though they are real and an ongoing source of deep stress, the kind that causes pain in your body, an upset stomach, and lack of sleep sometimes. But my worries, as real and pressing as they are, are nothing in comparison to what those women went through. My heart goes out to them, and I can’t do anything for them and I wish that I could. So I pray for them, but sometimes that just doesn’t feel like enough.

There are times when all we can do is pray, and at those times, prayer can seem like it's pointless. There’s a song by Martha Munizzi that goes, “Say the name of Jesus, say the name so precious, no other name I know, that can calm your fears and dry your tears and wipe away your pain. When you don’t know what else to pray, when you can’t find the words to say, say the name.” As Christians we know intellectually, because we hear it all the time, that the name of Jesus is the “Name above all names,” that “He is Lord,” and that “He has put everything under His feet.” We say these things to each other for encouragement, and share these words with others to encourage them, but there are times when we don’t feel like just saying a name is enough. We look at a problem, something happens that throws us off balance, we hear a news story about those women in Ohio, and we wonder where is God in all of this? But something does happen when we say that name, even when we don’t know what the answer will be, even when we don’t know if there is an answer. When we say that name, something in our situation starts to break open, something in our minds starts to believe again that there is something more than this, something that we can’t see now, but if we can just hang on, we’ll make it through.

On my way home last night I started to pray – I had gotten a voice mail message that threw me off, something that added to my stress, and I still had to finish my work day and get myself home and so I started praying. It was a simple prayer to God, “I need your help." There was a longer thought behind it, something like this, "You have the answer to this and I don’t, please help me to stay calm.” But the words I said to Him were "I need your help. Jesus please help." Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God,” and behind the words, my prayer thought was that I wanted to be still and know that He is God. But when the trouble comes, it’s hard to be still and know that He is there. So I kept praying, as I finished up for the day and got ready to leave for home, praying and praying and praying, "Please help, please help, please help," because it was hard to be still and know, hard to pray, and I didn’t have any words to say.

It takes me almost an hour and half to get home from where I was, and much of it is walking. But when I got on the train which is a relatively short ride, He told me to read Psalm 103. I have written here before about how God speaks to us in different ways and at different times, and this time was just as simple as my prayer had been, "Read Psalm 103." I had just been using a passage from that in a post here, so I went to read it again, and on the way there, when I opened my Bible, it opened to Nahum, a very small book, one of the minor prophets, that is not one that I usually think of when I need encouragement because it is mostly words from God against people who have been harming His children. But one of the biggest stressors I have been dealing with is because of something to do with people - people who have done things out of their own stress that have threatened to cause harm in my life. The harm has not come, but the threat has been there, and so I worry and worry and worry, even though the Lord tells us over and over again not to. The book of Nahum opens with the words, “The Lord’s anger against Ninevah," but in the midst of the charges against Ninevah, there were these words in verse 1:7, “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows  those who trust in Him.” There it was, the Word that I needed, springing up like life giving water.

As I started to write this, I looked the passage up online – it was much quicker than going back and trying to find the passage again. There’s a great tool that I use - you can search for any Bible passage just by putting in a few words in the search engine and the passage will come up in different translations. I didn’t remember exactly what the passage was or any of the exact words, so I just put in “Nahum,” and the first thing that came up was that same passage, but in another translation, “The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble, He cares for those who trust in Him.” When God wants to give you a message and make sure you know it’s from Him, He’ll confirm it over and over and over again, in different ways, just to make sure that you know that it's Him.

There was more that He had to say to me, so I read on further and there was more about the wrath of God against these people who were harming His children, then these words in verse 9, “Whatever they plot against the Lord, He will bring to an end, trouble will not come a second time.” The situations that I have been dealing with that have been causing me so much stress, God was telling me that He sees these things that are coming against my life as things that are coming against Him. Some of the things I have been dealing with are things that I have dealt with before, and He wanted me to know that I didn’t need to bother with them at all because He was going to stop it cold. Then there were these words in verses 12-13, “Although they have allies and are numerous, they will be destroyed and pass away. Although I have afflicted you, Judah, I will afflict you no more.”

Judah refers to a real people that the Lord was speaking to, but there are times when he speaks to us indivually and will let us know that our experience mirrors the experience of the group of people He was speaking to. Judah had a complicated relationship with God - Christ is known as the Lion of Judah, but there was a time when Judah was in deep rebellion against God and He had to turn His back on them and allow destruction to come so they would recognize how far away they had gone from Him, ask for His forgiveness, and come back home. There was a time in my life that I went through deep troubles, so deep that I wanted to die. It was at that time that I was born again, and He was telling me in this passage that yes, at that time He had allowed those things to happen because I was not walking in His ways, but He is not going to allow that to happen now.

In verse 15, there are these words that echo Isaiah 52:7, a passage He has given to me several times in the past year to encourage me, “Look, there on the mountains, the feet of one who brings good news, who proclaims peace. Celebrate your festivals, Judah, and proclaim your vows. No more will the wicked invade you, they will be completely destroyed.” By the time I got to Psalm 103 I was ready to say with David, “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name!” And as I read further, past the passage I used here in another blog, there was this message in verse 6, echoing the passage from Nahum, “The Lord executes righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed,” and this in verse 11, “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him.” The two passages kept echoing each other, and echoing other words He has given me, like the clear sound of a bell sending vibrations out and out and out and out and out . . .

Walking home from the train station, a song came to me and I started singing, “Great is Thy faithfulness, Great is Thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see.” I thought the next line was, “All I have needed thy strength hath provided,” but then as I kept singing, as I got home and was still singing, I thought that the word was “grace,” not strength. “All I have needed thy grace hath provided, great is Thy faithfulness Lord God of all.” I looked it up just to be sure, and I found this, "All I have needed Thy hand hath provided, great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me." The message just kept getting better and better and better, and more and more personal. He was letting me know that everthing I need He will give me, from His hand straight to mine.

As I started making my dinner, I saw five little birds sitting on the trash barrel my landlord had in front of my window. He leaves it there sometimes which is something that bothers me, but it didn’t bother me then because all I was looking at was the birds. When I was first born again and was dealing with some of the same stresses I am now, I took a walk in a park near where I was living at the time, and I saw some ducks playing in a pond and in the mud all around it. The Lord spoke to me at that time, using that image and bringing this verse to mind, “Look at the birds of the air; they do  not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26) I learned at that time how great was His faithfulness, and He was reminding me that I can bless the Lord with all of my soul because of that faithful love and mercy that He has shown me over and over again.

When I had started to pray, after I listened to the voice mail message that gave me such stress, I didn’t have the words to say. I was shaking a bit, my insides were all tight, my breathing was getting restricted. I was feeling threatened and in a corner with nowhere to run to. Sometimes the only thing you can do is say the name above all names, sometimes there are no words to say and sometimes you don’t even know what to pray, but when you say that name, He answers, light breaks through and the walls start to come down.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan