REFUELING SPIRITUAL RHYTHMS: WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Have you ever noticed the simple importance of a name?  If we get them wrong, it is always an embarrassment, or even worse, if we forget them completely, it is awful.  What if someone calls us a bad name, a detrimental name, or a vicious name?  We have plenty of name-calling in our society and world.  We use awful names in an effort to hurt each other, to make our point, or to arouse the hatred of groups, and enhance division.  We may use the children’s phrase, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will….”  Names hurt.   Have you ever noticed how God uses names differently?  God makes a point to call us by our given name, by our beloved name, by our affectionate name, not a name of hatred or anger, and not a name to run us down or run us over.  He calls us the name that will fill our hearts with love, our spirits with hope, and our hearts with joy.   In our series, Refueling Spiritual Rhythms, the sermon is What’s in a Name?  We go to Psalm 8 that begins with ‘Lord, my Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”  This is the living God.  He takes great care to call us by the best name, the loving name, because he wants a relationship of love with us.  God desires a relationship and has been working for centuries to bring you and me into that relationship.  Psalm 8 is David’s realization of this relationship, and it fills him with majesty and wonder.  Now that he has seen it, he cannot unsee it!  He responds to God’s name with praise and wonder!  We pray that as you read Psalm 8, you will experience the living God and you will be filled with wonder and praise because he has called your name and nothing can ever be the same!  

Psalm 8:

¹ LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. ² Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. ³ When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, ⁴ what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? ⁵ You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. ⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: ⁷ all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, ⁸ the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. ⁹ LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the Earth.