This Is What Changes When We Know God by Name

I’m praying through near-memorized verses when one word stops me. This! Like a golden key unlocking the past six weeks of naming God in the margins of my Bible as I read, it gleams with invitation.

Because he has known Me by NAME (emphasis mine),

He will call on Me, and I will answer.

I’ll be with him through hard times;

I’ll rescue him and grant him honor.

– Psalm 91:14b-15, The Voice

To know God by name is to know Him–

Delightful Shelter

Feast of Goodness

Never-Wavering Righteousness

Always-Saving Grace

Strengthening Compassion

Unceasing Grief

Tender Relief

Remnant Re-Gatherer

Urgency Evaluator

All-Seeing Savior

Erupting Joy

Must-Eat Sweetness

Hovering Glory

Always Near

Hand Cupped Around Mine

And although even a thousand lines of Who-God-Is* can’t adequately capture the depth of His glory, grace, and closeness, they each bring to attention an element of His unchanging nature. I’m discovering a God more tender and present than I ever imagined. A God who welcomes me to taste His tears and be floored by His weighty glory. A God who deeply knows me and soothes every ache with unlimited grace.

With every name I write, I move away from a fuzzy, generalized view of God towards an acutely specific one. This name-search treasure hunt is rapidly bringing God close enough to see in detail.

It begins to connect as I pause at the word ‘name’ at the end of Psalm 91: because we know God by name–by His many names–we know TO call on Him, HOW to call on Him, and WHAT to call Him.

Because we know God by name–by His many names–we know TO call on Him, HOW to call on Him, and WHAT to call Him. (Twyla Franz quote)

What Changes When We Know TO Call on God

Every distinct name of God is like one face of an intricate prism. The more we name God–the more we know Him–the more quickly we turn to Him in both joy and need. We see with growing clarity how He’s truly our All and Everything.

We call on Him because we grasp that He’s both holy and accessible, more than capable and limitless in power, moved with compassion and graciously patient.

There’s an unbreakable link between an intimate awareness of God’s nature and where we turn for answers. It’s because we’re deeply acquainted with the tender yet unchanging aspects of God’s nature that we know we can trust Him.

Naming God builds trust. It builds relationship. And that explains the dependent clause in our verse:

Because he has known Me by NAME (emphasis mine),

He will call on Me, and I will answer.

I’ll be with him through hard times;

I’ll rescue him and grant him honor.

– Psalm 91:14b-15, The Voice

We know TO call on God when our souls know we can trust Him.

What Changes When We Know HOW to Call on Him

The HOW coincides. The greater the depth of our understanding and trust of God, the less we second-guess how to approach Him.

We simply come expectant.

Softened with awe.

Exploding with gratitude.

We fear God in reverence rather than misunderstanding. The duality of His intense jealousy and unswerving devotion show us the ache in His great heart when we reject Him. We feel for Him, feel with Him, and we know He gets the raw and tender in us.

Behind us are the days we push God away because we don’t understand His answer. Instead, the hard in the road ahead pulls us in tighter. We linger in conversation because tough questions take time and the bristly places in our heart take time to unwind.

The longer we stay, the more He melts away our unbelief and reveals yet more aspects of who He is.

So we linger and keep naming and keep trusting because we know we can boldly approach Him (Hebrews 4:16).

What Changes When We Know WHAT to Call Him

Knowing WHAT to call God changes so much about how we pray. He’s not a general surgeon but a specialist for every need we could ever bring. Naming who God is in this kind of detail helps us be transparent and specific about our wrestle, our waning hope, our wild grief.

We come, souls bared, to the Healer.

Surrender our pain, questions, and confessions.

Give Him unhindered access.

The less we withhold, the more He can heal.

Bring your lament to Unceasing Grief and Tender Relief.

Bring your stress to the Urgency Evaluator.

Your self-doubt to Always-Saving Grace.

Your tender to the Delightful Shelter.

Bring your sadness to Erupting Joy.

Your impossible to Strengthening Compassion.

Your fear to Feast of Goodness.

Your unrest to Never-Wavering Righteousness.

Bring your bored to Hovering Glory.

Your unseen to the All-Seeing Savior.

Your lost to the Remnant Re-Gatherer.

And your ache to be known to Always Near.

He’s skilled and trustworthy, and He cares more than the human brain can fathom.

Let’s pray.

God, we are humbled and undone by Your many names–Your generous grace and overwhelming glory. Teach us more of Who You are so our trust continues to grow. May we come reverent and readily to our knees. May we name You in specifics as we pray. May we bring unceasing praise and tender honesty because You alone see us through and can make us whole.

As our relationship with You deepens, may it start a ripple from right where we stand. May the way we’re learning to name and know You help others trust and call on You too.

* I’m taking Mary Demuth’s 90-Day Bible Reading Challenge, searching for names of God as I read like it’s some sort of treasure hunt. Never though to look for God in this way until I began journaling through Ann Voskamp’s Sacred Prayer.

Just a friend over here in your corner,