Be: Just Be [Part 1]

Pastoral author and Bible teacher Alan Wright exists his bottom line, the first and most important, that's Pastor Alan Wright welcome to another message of good see your life in a whole new light. I'm excited for you to hear the teaching today.

In the series. We called saver has presented it were an older church in North Carolina are not able to stay with us throughout the entire program to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now.

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Contact us at pastoralan.org that's Pastor Alan.O RG or call 877-544-4860 877-544-4860 moral all of this later in the program but now let's get started with today's teaching here is Alan Wright are you ready for some good days you are a human being not a human doing.

You're doing flows out of your being in this crazy busy world.

God has a word for us tonight to go to the very essence of his own being that says to us what matters is who you are not all that you do and when you get that revelation, the piece that it brings and the focus on your life, not just the tranquility of not living such a stressful life, but the life that can be one of worship and joy as God leads you in your calling.

We are tonight in Exodus chapter 3, and our series, we call saver and we have a one-word title for each one of these messages. Saver awaken celebrate breeze rest and tonight the simplest verb of all be just be Exodus 3 verse 13 but Moses said to God, if the people of Israel. If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you and they asked me what is his name what shall I say to them, and God said to Moses, I am who I am and he said say this to the people of Israel.

I am has sent me to you.

God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, the Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob sent me to you. This is my name forever and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. One of the things is made is crazy busy is technology. I was talking to Mickey Thigpen is on our staff this week and he said he remember when he was a kid at a young kid, he went to a science symposium in which they were discussing the new invention, the laser had just come out and they were hypothesizing what use is there might be for the laser beam and they didn't say things like maybe one day it could fix cataracts and be used in precise surgeries and all this, but he said he distinctly remembered that one of the scientists said that it most likely would be used in typewriters to erase mistakes off the paper. The thing that you about that is that not only was it wrong, and that it was not installed on the typewriters, but that the answer was so wrong because nobody could envision at that time that we would all have personal computers and smart phones that would AutoCorrect for you as you're doing your word processing. In other words, it was so wrong that it wasn't even then the right category of being wrong. It was so wrong and this is the way people were they thought that all the technological advances was going to grant us a lot of leisure.

So back in the 50s. They were worried that we were going to just be bored in America because we had all this free time on our hands, not realizing that the technology actually made life speed up and that we have this unbelievable tendency to no matter what to feel all the empty spaces some years ago I heard a medical Dr. Richard Swenson give a presentation on his book called margin is that the problem in our lives as we leave no margin.

It's like if you had a piece of paper and you have no whitespace on it whatsoever. You can't hardly read it.

If you have something like that where you just says you put this up on the screen for as we have just print nothing on the right. Nothing on the left nothing to the top into the bottom is look at it. You go and read that you have some margin on a piece of paper to be able to even read it effectively and you gotta have some margin in your life in order to live it appropriately. It is Nike's famous slogan, just do it, but for our culture.

I think the slogan has become just do more and we define ourselves by what we do.

This is John meet John. He's a carpenter here Susie meet Susie. She said Dr. here is Sam he's an accountant. What do you do is what we say when we meet one another we so define life by what we do, that it's interesting as we read in Exodus 3 when God decided to give his personal name to Moses to describe his essence. He said his name is I am that there many names for God that describe what God does in those many attributes and activities of God are glorious and wonderful but the most important name for God in all of the Old Testament.

The foundational personal proper name for God means I am or some might say it means simply being because is taken from the Hebrew verb to be. I want to talk to you today about how we who are made in the image of the great I am are liberated by the gospel to be in the image of God, and I pray that not only will this help you to learn how to savor the blessings of God each moment in the moment and become mindful of every blessing, but that you would see something radically wonderful about who God is and therefore about who you are as well. Names are fascinating to me. I'm just very interested in names and sometimes parents name their kids very intentionally. My father-in-law, grandma lends his dad loved the world of finance and so grandma's younger brother was named Meryl Merrill Lynch and I but I I think that if some of the names that you can read about. Just for fun. I saw one that last name night and the first name is Jed in the middle initial. Was I so as a Jedi Knight saw a man whose last name was light and they called in but Bud Light I got whose last name was Bacon and his first name was Chris in his middle initial P which made him crispy bacon and this one particular thought was funny. A man named Herbert in his first name was Ken and so his name was can hurt, but the odd thing was he is a medical doctor so he was doctor can hurt and but anyway I can laugh too much on my whole I've been Mr. Wright so everybody is like, you know how you met Mr. Wright didn't answer the meaning of names is fascinating to me. We were very intentional with our kids names very intentional. Our sign his name Matthew Bennett right I would call them Bennett we were going to name them.

Bennett Matthew right, but his initials would be BMW and I thought that might not be good and worse than that. It would've been BM right and we how we had that sense, we can't give kids an opportunity for that one. So we put Matthew before that's wise Matthew Bennett right, but Matthew is a beautiful New Testament Greek word that means gift of God, and we had some considerable time and our efforts to conceive and God gave us the strongly we see them every day is a gift, and Bennett is family name that is and's mother's maiden name and my wife's middle name is she was growing up Bennett and it is from the Latin for blessing like the word benediction and I give it the end of every service short short benediction. Then you got Bennett and so was a gift from God and is a blessing on our daughter Abigail I know for sure that I wanted to name her Abigail. She was born in the midst of a time of spiritual renewal in my life, in which the joy of the Lord had just overtaken my life a joy that really hasn't left and it was from the Holy Spirit and the joy of the Lord is the most wonderful thing and Abigail means my father's joy or my father is joyful, Abigail, and that she's Abigail Lambright names mean a lot, especially when someone has named them because they signify something was different with God is that God when he names someone. He not only has the capacity to identify who they are, but he has the capacity to make them become who it is that he calls them to be is a very powerful thing. So he calls Abram which means hi father. He changed his name to Abraham, because that means a father of a multitude and he was going to turn him into the father of nations. The name Joshua is actually the name in Hebrew yes you yes you and it means the Lord saves are the Lord of salvation. Interestingly, Jesus is the essentially the English version of the Greek transliteration of Joshua yes you I became the Asus switch to us as Jesus, but Jesus's name is Joshua. So when the angel told Mary and Joseph. You shall call him Jesus is saying you shall call him Joshua, yes you, because he will save the people from their sentence names are fascinating to know someone's name is a very personal and harmful thing. That's Alan Wright will have more teaching moment from today's important series so much worried about yesterday's carriers cemetery getting Betty for tonight is hard to focus on the matters most. Wearing seasoned coaches, and mindful psychological program. Eastern religion mindfulness living in the present life messages with your digital way of saying thanks for your partnership textures and levers of God's grace. Each moment moment every day of your life gospel is shared when you get Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you get today.

We will send you a special offer. We are happy to send this to you as I thanks from Alan Wright Ministries, seven 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website pastor at Gatwick today's teaching you once again is an interesting way. When Jacob wrestled an angel in the midst of the night. This manifestation of God and wrestled and wrestled and we read it Genesis 32 verse 27 he said to him, what is your name Angel asked Samantha messenger of God asked him that and he said Jacob then he said your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel for you striven with God and with men was names change and then, but this is interesting in verse 29 Jacob asked him please tell me your name, but he said why is it yes my name and there he blessed him wouldn't give him his name in ancient cultures especially it was understood once you knew someone's name.

It was in a sense, to give you a kind of power over that person.

And so here's a picture of God being unwilling to reveal himself in that moment to Jacob. Part of this is because it is so intensely personal. There's a big difference between calling the leader of the United States, Mr. Pres. versus: Donald, there is a big difference in knowing someone's proper name, rather than merely a title and what's interesting in Exodus 3 is that when God appears to Moses in this burning bush and then they have this ongoing dialogue. What we saw today is God wanted Moses to know God's own personal name is a beautiful scripture in Psalm nine verse 10 those who know your name put their trust in you for you, oh Lord have-nots forsaken those who seek you. Those that know your name can put their trust in you is something very important about the fact that God wanted Moses to know his name, and this was, not a title. It was God's name that he gave Yahweh is how we say it, it is the most important name for God in all of the Old Testament, but it has never been translated into our Bibles. It is literally in Hebrew. These four letters that we transliterate YHWH and it may have been I say may have been because Hebrew originally did not have any vowels indicated that came later.

The valid points we call them, but it may have been pronounced Yahweh, but that those four letters are considered to that is to the Israelites, the most holy for letters and that are imaginable know when those four letters in Hebrew. In the Old Testament appear in your Bible, and almost every English translation. They appear is the word Lord. All capitalized L ORD so whenever you see the word Lord. All capitalized. You can know that actually it's this word.

Yahweh and they were considered so holy that the Jewish people were afraid to say the name less. They accidentally use the Lord's name in vain. So the Jewish people would not say the name Yahweh.

Instead, they use the term Adonai, which is the Hebrew word for my Lord. Or actually it is my Lords, and in the same way mysteriously that Elohim, the name for the more generic name for God is in the plural.

So at night is not because there's more than one God, but is the say you are the Lord of lords, and so Adam and I means my Lord and so many times if they came to the taxpayer to read Yahweh they would either just read it still an Orthodox Jew would do this and you just skip it or say the name to say the words the name or they might say at 09 which is my Lord. Another another name for God in the Old Testament now. What happened is that Adonai over time became merged with the four consonants for Yahweh and the vowel sounds of Adam and I were added and so that's where you end up getting the word Jehovah. It actually is Yahweh. But using the ad and I vowel sounds so it would be like the whole law which there is no Latin for a J and when it came Latinate, it became Jehovah. So this is to say that the word Jehovah does not exist in the Bible so Yahweh is the name that he gives in Exodus we were to look at it more closely. Yahweh is usually translated Lord in English translations, but this is not a really acceptable or satisfactory rendering of it because Lord is a title and Yahweh is a personal proper name so it's one of those things. This is insufficient in our translations because it would be like every time that you referred to me and it was only pastor and never Alan because God has given his personal name. This is very important in the Scriptures because Yahweh occurs 6828 times in the Old Testament, which is more than three times as much is the symbol word God Elohim or L it means beloved to lay the foundation for this, it means that as holy as he is, that God wants to be known in a very personal way to give his name is to say call me Yahweh is like the present United States saying to you, call me Donald call it's like it's like a queen saying call me by my neck and so if you can imagine the holy holy holy God who meets Moses and gives him his name only, just go a little further with this because I don't want to make this kind of dryness. Talk about something that is endlessly deep in a fairly simple way here because I want to see this that actually it is if we could put back up.

Exodus 3 tax the verb that is rendered here in Exodus 313 that then Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God and father sent me to the asked is his name what shall I say them and God said to Moses, I am who I am. The words that are used. There is simply the Hebrew verb for to be as high and literally what this says is God said to Moses, I am being that I am being I am that I am palling right days teaching, replacing the bookmark right here in this teaching will be just be it's from the series saver. How is back with us in the studio assuring a parting good news thought for the day in just a moment please stay with us so much worry about yesterday's failures cemetery getting Betty for tonight is hard to focus on the matters most. Wearing seasoned coaches, and mindfulness psychological program in Eastern religion.

Mindfulness living in the present life messages with your digital partnership making gift textures and levers of God's grace.

Each moment to moment every day of your life gospel is shared when you get right ministries.

This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you get today.

We will send you a special offer. We are happy to send this to you as I thanks from Alan Wright Ministries, seven 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website pastor work Alan you probably predicted I would say this to be or not to with a title like this and I like what you reference.

We are human beings, not human doings. It's important to realize that your value is not in what you do, your value is that you are so you can just be like, you might say. Just do it. But today and tomorrow. I just was.

They just beat it and were taken a lesson from the fascinating name the personal name that God gave us that this is who I am.

I am that I am or I am being that I am being that God exists and that he is in the present with us that he is who he is, that he already is who he is. He is God and we learned so much from that will earn more tomorrow. They know that that if God is primarily defined by the is we're primarily defined by the fact that simply exist, and it makes us infinitely valuable. So when you get caught up in the midst of the busyness of the season sometimes take a moment and just the today's good news message is a listener supported production Alan Wright Ministries