The Names of God: Jehovah-Maccaddeshcem

The LORD Our Sanctifier

Exodus 31:13 
Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 
And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The biblical means of sanctification is not an eradication of man's sin nature but rather God's setting a man apart for some reason. 

He sets us apart when we accept Christ as our Lord & Savior. This is not a setting apart like the 1% of the population that lives outlandishly with every material thing they could ever want or ever need at their fingertips. This is not a setting apart like a culling, where the sick & infected are removed & quarantined them to protect the rest of the population. No, the setting apart is not an isolation in either extreme. Rather its inclusion with a greater purpose, a calling, to glorify & honor God in every single situation & circumstance in your life...whatever, no matter what it may be. 

Sanctification by Jehovah-Maccaddeshcem comes in many forms, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful, always necessary. For us, sanctification by the Lord has looked like this: we lost our home to a fire, a month later we miscarried our first baby, 18 months of infertility followed. Infertility was ended by the joyful news of our second pregnancy, at 5 months pregnant we learned our son no longer had a heartbeat, I labored & delivered him & we laid him to rest. A third pregnancy followed, it included 20 weeks of bedrest, medication, endless tests, a failed induction & finally a c-section to welcome our son. A tumultuous year began as did a fourth pregnancy, a perfect pregnancy which resulted in another son. It also resulted in the disowning of my husband by his parents because of my husband's decision that we were lacking something in our lives that alcohol & a false knowledge of God could never fill, God Himself. One might think that once we made the decision to put God first in our lives that the sanctification process was complete. But that is wholly untrue. The next half of our story includes 8 months of unemployment, food stamps, financial ruin, 2 more miscarriages, an answer to the call of my husband to preach the Gospel, the pastoring & resigning of our first church, the birth & NICU stay of our first daughter, & the complete humbling of ourselves to God's will & purpose. 

What does any of that have to do with being wholly sanctified by God? It sounds like a pity party full of rotten & miserable circumstances with a few sunny times thrown in just to keep us off the ledge. But it is anything but that. It was opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to glorify & honor God. Sometimes we did & it made bearing the burden of that situation all the easier to bear, it made helping others who were in the midst of what we had come through a blessing & a privilege. Sometimes we didn't & we bore the hurt, the anger, & the bitterness of our situation. But God in His infinite mercy & grace, chipped away at those callouses on our hearts & He gave us a purpose. He gave us Himself. 

The biblical means of sanctification is not an eradication of man's sin nature but rather God's setting a man apart for some reason. It is a process. One that begins immediately upon Salvation & does not end until I kneel at His feet, where I pray that He lifts me up & proclaims "Well done my child". 

He has called us out to live out from amongst the world while still walking within it. It's hard. It's messy. It's painful. But it's also beautiful, joyful, & overwhelmingly good in so many ways. 

Sanctification means Living Him, Loving Him, Longing for Him, in every opportunity given, good & bad, painful & pleasant. 

The Names of God: Jehovah-Shammah

Jehovah-Shammah: The LORD Is There

This name of God emphasizes His presence. 

Ezekiel 48:35b: ...and the name of the city from that day shall be, The LORD is there.

Exodus 3:12a: And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee:

Matthew 28:20b: ...and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

After a history of miscarriages, burying our stillborn son, and battling periods of infertility, my pregnancy with Reaghan was like a cool breeze on a sunny day. It was perfect. She was perfect. But still, I worried. Once that seed of doubt in your body's ability to carry a baby to term has been planted, it is hard to uproot. The devil tends to it, making it flourish with every twinge your body makes, at every doctor appointment where it takes a split second longer than it did the last time to find a heartbeat. He is the Master of Lies in the Garden of Doubt and Deceit. 

Yet, despite the odds that the devil made sure to let me know were stacked against me, I carried a healthy baby to term and had a healthy pregnancy. My water breaking in the middle of the night 10 days before my scheduled c-section was a fun and exciting surprise. We hurried to the hospital and Reaghan Delainey-James was born less than 7 hours later, tiny but oh so perfect. We were in love and praising our Savior for His mercy and grace. 

But our time in the sun was quickly overshadowed. 

She was tiny. Tinier than we'd expected at just 5lbs 1oz and seemed to be having trouble stabilizing her blood sugar on her own. She was working hard and nursing like a champion but was burning off all her energy as soon as she was taking it in. They were sticking her heel and checking her blood sugar at every feeding. She was pitiful and I felt like they were using her for a pin cushion. 

Then Brandon had to leave with my boys. He took them home, trying to keep as much normal in their little lives as he could with so much new going on. He was coming back first thing in the morning with the boys. We didn't plan on being there more than 2 nights anyway. It was a short inconvenience to deal with before we could all be together at home.

Then my Momma had to leave. She'd been up since I'd called her to come sit with the boys when my water broke and excitement was giving way to exhaustion. 

But it was fine. I had my baby and everything was going to be just fine. This was all just temporary.

But then the 24 hour mark came and Reaghan's blood sugar was still low and there I was alone as my brand new baby was taken from me and admitted to the NICU. I didn't even have time to call Brandon before they took her from me. I was nearly hysterical by the time I did get a hold of him and as I sat there alone, watching the nurses blow one tiny vein out after another trying to put an IV in her little hands and then her feet, and finally getting it placed in her scalp, the devil took me right over the edge into full blown hysteria. 

God had abandoned me right there on the C wing of the neo-natal intensive care unit. He had played the cruelest of tricks on me. He had taken me through 37 weeks of a perfect pregnancy, had given me the most beautiful daughter, had let me hold her, nurse her, kiss her, and now He was going to take her from me. 

The devil is most powerful in the art of persuasion. 

The next 5 days blurred one into another. I hadn't stepped outside the walls of the hospital since I had walked in to give birth. There were no windows in the NICU, just curtains separating the cribs from each other. Sleep was not allowed in the NICU and if it hadn't been from sheer exhaustion it would have been impossible to attain anyway. The constant beeping of the machines, the bright lights, the nurses calling back and forth to each other, but the worst was the silence of the babies. The NICU was at full capacity the entire length of our stay, 40+ babies fighting to survive. Some winning. Some losing. And with the exception of one little baby boy, there was no crying. It was haunting and terrifying. 

The only breaks I took were the mandatory hour in the morning and again in the evening when I would grab a bite to eat, for the doctors and nurses to do their rounds, and a scant hour or two for sleep if my Momma was there to relieve me. The thoughts of leaving Reaghan alone were suffocating. As if, if I left her alone, she wouldn't be there when I returned. Twice already I had left during a mandatory break only to return to her with more wires and more lights because once her blood sugar had stabilized and she was able to control it, her bilirubin shot sky high and entered dangerous levels. Our last night there, she was under triple photo-therapy and I could not hold her at all, not even to nurse her. It was the longest night yet that I'd had to endure.

I wish that I could say that these 5 days were spent spiritually trusting in God and leaving it all in His hands but I can't. I was hurt. I was angry. I felt completely and utterly alone. I was judgmental. I lashed out. And then I was taught a lesson. And it was a most difficult one to learn. But it was swift and it brought me closer to the Lord than I'd been in days.

It was a lesson that taught me just how present Jehovah-Shammah had truly been, not just during this ordeal, not just during my pregnancy, but in the last 5 years of our lives. He had set things in motion long before so that we would be protected in His love, mercy, and grace. Had Brandon and I continued on living the lives we had been after we got married, our daughter would not just have been battling low blood sugar and high bilirubin levels, but fighting to breathe, fighting to live, she may have been fighting a battle that she couldn't win all because of choices that I as her Momma had made, just as so many of the other babies laying in the very same NICU were. 

I look back now on that time spent in the NICU and realize how paltry that 5 days seems. So many of those babies had been there for weeks and for months, going days without a single visitor, only being held to be changed or to be fed. Yet the Lord was ever present there. He was there in the seasoned nurses who held me while I cried, who treated my baby as if she were their own. He was there in the volunteers who came in just to hold those tiny babies who had truly been abandoned so that they'd not starve for tenderness and human connection. His love was there, woven into the handmade blankets, hats, and booties given to the babies there in the NICU, some of whom would never leave. 

Yes, Jehovah-Shammah was there in the C wing of the NICU, of that I am sure.  Just as He is there in all the other times in our lives when we can feel Him the least.

The Names of God: Jehovah-Tiskenu

Jehovah-Tiskenu: The LORD Our Righteousness

Jeremiah 23:6 KJV

In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

After 18 months of silence on this blog I finally feel at liberty to write again. The last 18 months have been a mixture of both wonder and wretchedness. We have felt as though we were in a trial by fire and at times we were unsure of whether we would perish or persevere. 

I have questioned God many, many times in course of the last year and a half. There were times when I could not for the life of me understand why we were dealing with the issues that we were. And others times I was immensely grateful and thankful that He had chosen to put us exactly where we were at that time. 

However, regardless of our circumstances over the last year or the circumstances that we face in the future, one thing above all has been made clear, Jehovah-Tiskenu will stand above all. He is The LORD Our Righteousness and even when everything else in our lives seems steeped in sin and despair, He is always there, guiding, shining a light in the darkness. He is the Righteousness that will always prevail. 

I feel as though I am once more dwelling safely in Jehovah-Tiskenu and I am overwhelmed with joy and excitement to be writing for His Glory and His Honor once again!