You Know My Name
It's Sabbath evening. I decided to have a mini worship session on my own. I put my headphones on, pressed shuffle on my gospel playlist and began belting out the tunes. From the Kirk Franklin to the CeCe Winans. The Jonathan Nelson, to the Tye Tribbet to the Maverick City. Then Tasha Cobbs "You Know My Name" starts playing. And my heart feels a bit different. I've always loved this song. It's always felt personal. To the point, I did a mini-sermon on it during the pandemic in 2020. Lo and behold I found the sermon on my laptop and I thought it was worth sharing. So here it is below... (excuse my use of colloquial language. I decided not to edit the original sermon. Ps. I grew up in South London)...
Enjoy!
You Know My Name
Ask yourself these questions:
What makes a relationship work?
Out of everything you’ve listed, are there any that you feel are like top 2 or 3?
Do you ever feel pressured or find it hard to maintain certain relationships in your life, such as with friends, colleagues, family, or loved ones?
So obviously those are visible people – people who you can see touch, physically hear, physically feel, smell, etc. – what about your relationship with God?
Do you feel guilt or shame or stress or just lower - do you find yourself giving into temptation easier when you’re not putting effort into a relationship with God?
So for me, the 3 biggest things in a relationship are communication, trust and empathy. I want two-way communication; I want to know I can trust you and I want you to be able to empathise/comprehend when I talk or what I’m feeling
The way I deliver things or explain things is based on what I’m going through or what I’ve gone through. Otherwise, I can’t explain or talk about it.
Me, God and Communication:
So for a couple months now I’ve been low. However, at the beginning, I was gunning for God. I was still in my element (or so I thought). I was praying, daily devotions, bible studies, watching sermons and trying to apply them in my life, journaling and what not – I was buzzing even though I was sad; cool… so as I said things were a bit difficult and I was struggling to cope with a range of emotions so I decided to let me pray and fast – I laid out everything on my heart and I was like cool… surely God will get back to me init? That’s what I’ve been taught all my life. When you pray and fast God steps in with the divine intervention… So I’ll hear Him soon? I’ll see something soon, right? … no … joke is everything actually went DOWNHILL. I was thinking God you clearly didn’t hear my pleas. You must have misread the instructions like Wagwan…
As I said I value communication, but it wasn’t happening, so I said you know what… time for me to stop communicating and my prayer life began to decrease
Me, God and Trust:
Obviously, trust is built on communication and I wasn’t getting that. Then my 2nd thing is, that I’ve fallen into the trap of treating God how I treat everybody else. I tell people enough to know wagwan but not enough to know wagwan. I really get scared to trust people or to let people in. The thought scares me can’t lie but yeah so I’ve started to feel scared to trust God. What also scared me is the idea that the more I trust God is Satan going to come at me harder because I’m already tired. As in I gave things to God (or so I thought) and the situations have just either not changed or worsened
Me, God and Empathy:
So you’re not chatting to me. I don’t feel like I can trust you which leads me to believe that God isn’t understanding what I’m going through. He isn’t hearing my tears. Seeing my distress. Does He even care? My situation has now gone from bad to worse. So I said you know what I’m done.
It then reached a point where I actually felt and still feel guilty, ashamed, confused, and angry.. I felt like I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t chat …
But let me tell you something… every time this happens or something similar happens GOD NEVER WAITS FOR ME TO BE READY TO COME BACK – HE FINDS HIS WAY TO SAY HELLO SISSS I’M STILL HERE YOU KNOW; I WANT TO RECONCILE WITH YOU
THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU – GOD WANTS TO RECONCILE WITH YOU. God doesn’t call us to knowledge or to just be all about works – one pastor put it this way, we have so much knowledge about what we should and shouldn’t be doing, how we should supposedly be acting and just knowledge about God and the world at large that it ends up causing destruction. It drives us away from a relationship. Satan doesn’t care how much you know; He just wants to know that He has at least 1% of you because then you haven’t surrendered 100% to God.
So God has jokes… I stopped praying, and trusting and all yet one day a thought just came to my head whilst I was stressing and I was reminded that during my prayer and fast I had prayed for God to help me decrease so that He can increase and I honestly starting laughing – dangerous prayer – see I thought I was a big girl, thought because of all I was doing I was walking by faith not by sight what a lie- the shaking I got. My faith was stretched till it was sparse, but God can take that little faith or reignite faith within and He is so loving that He doesn’t wait for you… He will come to you. Too often we hear the story of the prodigal son, but I have a couple others that depict this reconciliation….
Jonah
Man try run away from God and doing His work because of bitterness and anger and arguably fear that he held in His heart – God didn’t wait for Jonah to realise His stupidity. God said lemme send something big to just remind this guy who I am – a whole storm and a big fish … Jonah had to humble himself and deep God over feelings – let me do what I was called to do, and God gave him that 2nd chance
Moses
The title of this thing is You Know My Name – cool this is where it comes into play. Moses too had run away. He had just killed a man, so he was fearing for his life. The bible doesn’t say specifically but I’m sure my g was having an identity crisis – I mean that’s definitely how it’s depicted in that movie The Prince of Egypt. So now Moses is chilling, He’s married, employed as a shepherd… and everything He’s been through has led to this moment… years later God hadn’t forgotten about Him and it was time to show him. Exodus 3:2-4
2 And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
3 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
4 And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.
… we know the story from there … God used Moses in a mighty way.
Saul (now called Paul)
See my guy was persecuting Christians you know – you have to remember Saul had some type of relationship with God. He was a Jew, A Pharisee. Their values and priorities were a bit distorted. He had hatred and anger in his heart. God had to show Him sir like you’ve got me wrong; let me show you who I am and what I can do – Acts 9:1-8
And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest,
2 And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.
3 And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:
4 And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
5 And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
6 And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.
7 And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.
8 And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.
God called Him by name, the situation wasn’t great, but it led to a ministry that was powerful and still holds weight today
Zacchaeus
This one lol, God loves to chat to me when I don’t want to chat to Him. He’s really got jokes.I was watching a sermon and he spoke about Zacchaeus character - Luke 19:1 – 6
And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho.
2 And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich.
3 And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature.
4 And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way.
5 And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house.
6 And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully.
Again Jesus called him by name. It’s funny because Zacchaeus couldn’t see Jesus and when he was up in the tree you would think Jesus wouldn’t even notice him but no Jesus looked up and called him by name – Zacchaeus means pure. The way the pastor put it was that God is calling us back to who he created us to be, back to the Garden of Eden. Calling us to restoration. He’s literally calling us by name. God called Zacchaeus and he experienced character transformation
Things I took from these stories:
Humble ourselves – pride is a destroyer of relationships. If you don’t humble yourself, you will be humbled. Look at Jonah, Saul/Paul. Even in regular relationships we need to humble ourselves.
Patience – I studied law and there is something called case law. Within criminal law Assault is defined as “"an assault is committed where the defendant intentionally or recklessly causes the victim to apprehend immediate unlawful personal violence.” There’s loads of law around it but there’s bare cases that discuss the meaning of immediate the key one is - Smith v Chief Constable of Woking Police (google it) which essentially ruled that ' Immediate does not mean the same as instantaneous'.
The same principle applies – God hears you immediately but that don’t mean you’ll see or receive your answer in that very instant. You may not see or feel your life change in that very instant, you may not get what you asked for in that very instant or never. But believe He who calls your name and has begun a good work in you will see it through till the very end – but also patience with yourself sometimes we forget God didn’t come to condemn. He came to transform and save _ God didn’t ask us if He should send His son to die for us no, He wanted to reconcile so bad that He just done it
Level up – Ciara Level Up gives me so much motivation the beat gets me pumping and the lyrics get me hype but honestly Zacchaeus couldn’t see Jesus but he didn’t just turn away from the crowd, my man climbed a whole tree to get a better view. It’s not good enough to just say yeah cool I don’t see him so whatever – faith without works is dead and vice versa, many times we need to look within and see what we can do to remind ourselves or bring ourselves back in line with Jesus. To make Jesus our focus.
God is a supernatural being, we are not on his level - God sees you, hears you, and we need, well I know I need to stop treating God like He is a common human. He says His ways are higher than our ways, He says the words that leave His mouth shall not return to Him void, they shall be accomplished, He said He has an expected end for you – He will call your name at the moments He knows He needs to just up for us to like Moses say Here I am.
Revelation 3:20:
20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come into him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Practical advice
Self-reflection which includes spiritual reflection – the hindrances; what’s causing you to hold back – guilt, laziness, not ready to give up the lifestyle, idolising other things
I realised we talk about there being a season for everything yet even in our different seasons/paths of our walk we’re still tryna continue stepping in the old ways that were perfect for a previous season – like during quarantine pastors have focused so much on how the church has to change due to this season but we are the church, the church is a body, a body has different parts .. so as we all play a part what are we doing individually internally – for me as it has been difficult… worship music and singing, reflections and not like getting down on my knees and praying but have 22 discussions… it’s not where I was before but it’s keeping me connected, it’s helping my faith and it’s pushing me through
Even if you have to start small – God’s word – cool you were reading big big passages before, why not shorten that or even focus on a verse and try and draw what God is telling you, if you need to analyse the verses around it then so be it but yeah
You know in relationships where people talk about spicing things up – do just that. I’ve seen people talk about going on dates with God. Creating spaces to read or talk, going outdoors and observing nature and seeing what lessons you take from there – one guy from my old church took his children to the museum one Sabbath and they discussed history and God’s plans, switching it up - have fun with God, with His word, even getting creative – drawings based on what you feel, mini movies, writing songs, poetry – these are all ways to commune with God and delve into His word. Just start -
Reframing your mindset and challenging thoughts with God’s word – so I have a scripture wall – literally have verse on it for everything that I struggle with – the Bible says in Jeremiah 17:9 (Easy English Bible version):
A person's mind may deceive him and cause trouble.
It is sick and nobody can make it better.
Nobody can completely understand it. – Jesus literally challenged all of Satan’s lies with the word of God x
Last thing I want to leave with you is my favourite passage of scripture – Philippians 3:12-14 – Easy English Bible Version
12 I am not saying that I have already reached that point in my life. I have not yet completely become the person that God wants me to be. But I am trying very hard to reach that point. That was Christ's purpose when he first made me his own. 13 My Christian friends, I do not think that I have reached that point yet. But this is what I do: I do not think about past things that have already happened. Instead, I try hard to reach the things that are in front of me. 14 I am like a runner who wants to reach the end of the race. I run straight towards that point, so that I can win God's gift. Because I belong to Christ Jesus, God has called me to live with him in heaven. That is God's gift to me at the end of the race.