GOD Is Mighty: Part I

God is mighty...I love the sound of that. He goes by so many different names. There are so many dimensions to His character, His personality, and His being, and each of the different names reveals an aspect of who He is. But One of my favorite names for God is found in the Old Testament. He is called 'El Shaddai,' (from the Acadian word shaddock -mountain) which translated means 'God the Mighty' or 'God Almighty'.

When I was about 10 or 11 years old my best friend and I were camping behind his apartment complex. Now, why we were doing that in town when I lived in the country I don't know. But there we were with my brand new tent my parents had given me. We had made hot dogs out on the grill, and so John decided that we needed to put the embers out responsibly. I followed him around the building and up the stairs where he got a huge bowl and filled it with water. Why he didn't grab a pitcher or a bucket, I don't know. But there we were with this big bowl of H2O.

We started outside and he decided that he needed to go down backward so that the weight of the water wouldn’t send him flying down the stairs. My role was to go in front and have his back. When we neared the bottom of the stairs, these two big guys who were all of probably 14 or 15 by the way, came out of the apartment on the ground floor. They had made a name for themselves at school as the tough kids. I vividly remember one making judo jabs and kicks in our general direction. What I didn't realize was that most likely he was a little intoxicated. I remember being afraid and feeling like he had all the power in the situation. I wished that I was the Karate Kid.

What seemed like minutes was only a matter of seconds. My best friend leaned over to me and whispered, 'Get ready to run.' I'm pretty sure I peed my pants at that point. I knew what he was going to do. Remember that big, ole bowl of water he was carrying? He threw it in the big kid's face. Everything else is pretty much a blur...perhaps that's because I was running for my life. It should go without saying, but it won’t, that within the hour we were both completely drenched, and I had to borrow a change of clothes. But anyhow...the point is that this kid had made a name for himself. He wanted people to know that he was large and in charge. He was powerful...and I feared him.

The Israelites were powerless and weak

The people of Israel best understood fear and the feeling of being powerless. The book of Exodus explains that they have been in captivity for more than four hundred years in Egypt. When God decided to deliver them, they were living and working under the harsh hand of a new Pharaoh The king himself was afraid that the people had become too great, so he basically decided to work them to death to prevent the possibility of them ever trying to take over. But God said He heard the cries of His people and in doing so, He sent Moses to lead them. As we all know, the Pharaoh said 'no'. Ten times to be exact. In response to each of Pharoah’s “nos” God's response was to send a plague on the land and people of Egypt; everything from the water of the Great Nile turning to blood... to the deaths of the Egyptians' firstborn. But the Hebrew houses went untouched by the despair. I have to wonder what the Egyptians were thinking...it was as if a line were drawn in the sand. And what about the Israelites? Even though Moses kept coming home with a 'no', they could clearly see God was working.

Here's the thing: the people had great expectations. They expected God to deliver them--to set them free. God agreed, but He was just getting started and had a much greater plan as we will see.