El Chaiyai, The God of My Life

He has and always will be, the God of my life and yours, the central person who we look to and testify of His goodness.

Psalm 42.8

Yet the Lord Yehovah (Messiah Pre-Incarnate) will command his lovingkindness during the day,
and at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God El Chai’I (The Powerful Living Word) of my life.

Sometimes I wake in the night, or wake up singing or praying, even in the night we are in fellowship with God.

Psalm 73.26 My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

God is at the centre of our life, He is our portion forever!

What a privilege to know that He is our portion forever.

As I get older and my body ages and I become less sure of its strength, it’s good to know that He is my strength when my own fails.

I may no longer be like a mountain goat on the hills, running up and down, like I did in my youth, but His eyes are on me and He lifts me up.

Psalm 42.1-2 As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

The deer is desperate for water, so should we be for God.

We have an innate desire for God, a hunger and a thirst for Him.

We long for Him because He is our portion.

He is our deepest longing, our life, our thirst is always satisfied when we seek Him.

Deuteronomy 30.19

I call on heaven and earth as witnesses today that I have offered you life or death, blessings or curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants will live.

God entreats us to choose life, but what will we choose?

An abundant table of life, or our own way and death?

He is our greatest hope.

Discouragement and giving up hope is equal to death, therefore be encouraged to put your hope in God!

John 10.10

The thief comes to kill, steal and destroy, but I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

The devil comes to discourage, tear down and kill, aiming to stop us from discovering God’s life and steal from us if we have it, but he cannot give or generate life.

In Job 2.8-9, just after Satan has spoken to God to ask permission to persuade Job to curse Him, the very next verse has Job’s wife saying just what Satan has just been saying,

“Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!”

But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

“Curse God and die”, give up hope, He doesn’t love you and doesn’t care about you, look how you’ve ended up!”

Many people say, “If God loves people, why do we go through suffering?”

But Job replies, “Shall we accept good from God and not adversity?”

In Job 13.15, his reply is the same, “Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him.”

Let this be our watchword, whatever comes our way, to trust the Lord in all we receive.

When we become Christians and give our lives over to God, we accept and acknowledge Him as Lord of our life, to direct it both now and in the future, we trust Him with it.

He is the Creator and the Giver of life and He gives us eternal life in the future.

He is the strong one (El) who is the source and preserver and giver of all life

He shares His life with us through His abundant creation, He breathed His life into us and we get to share in eternal life with Him, but we have to respect or “fear” Him as the Author of Life, our life, which comes from Him.

In Job 38, God responds to Job’s questionings and replies;

“Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements?

Surely you know!”

He continues like this for the rest of the chapter, leaving both us and Job in no doubt of who is in charge.

God responds like a parent or teacher who is outraged at having their authority questioned by an ungrateful child, but people do it every day.

We have been given everything, but what is our response? Rebellion or worship?

Every day we set ourselves up as God, or those with the ability to judge God in His place, when we have actually no ability to answer any of those questions or produce those results!

In Job 1.21 Job accepts this and continues to worship God; “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there.

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

When we trust in Him, He leads us into life, eternal.

God has graciously given us life on this earth and He decides when it is taken back again.

God Given Identity

He names us, gives us value, hope and purpose.

He gives us our identity in Him.

In Him we live and move and have our being.

When we found Him, we found life and the purpose for our life!

His names for us are intentionally specific.

Our identity should be rooted in El Chaiyai, the God of our life.

He gives us new life, so let’s explore it!

Let Him in His Word define our life and our identity, rather than our roles and activities.

Our activity does not define our identity, but “being in Him” precedes “doing for Him”.

Let your doing flow out of your identity in Christ, from being in Him and from the security of being His child.

John 14.6 – I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one comes to the Father except through me.

God preserves, sustains and defends our life, He wants for us to have life so much, especially in Him, that He gave His own life for it.

Jesus gives us abundant life and asks us to choose between life and death, it’s our choice to choose life in Him, by making Him the God of our life.

“I have come,” He says, “that you might have life in all its fulness.”

The life of God in us overcomes death.

Rivers of Living Water

We have rivers of living water inside us which flow from us.

Water brings life.

If you water a garden or give water to an animal it will live.

We are containers and conduits of God’s life.

We can’t live without water.

“Life, life abundant life, Jesus alone is the giver!” as a song goes.

He is the God who is alive and alive to help you and me.

Do not depend on the arm of the flesh, depend on Him.

He gives us life to overcome all the attacks of the devil.

When I sat under the pastors teaching in my church in the early days, no matter how boring the topic, I could feel the life of the Spirit coursing through my veins, God was bringing me into life.

God is alive forevermore.

His life overcomes all opposing forces, no-one shall snatch you out of His hand!

He promised to conquer the whole land and drive out all previous occupants.

The new life with in us drives out the old, the world, the flesh and the devil.

Jesus brings us resurrection life; the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead, living and dwelling in us.

“I will be their God and they shall be My people.”

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.”

Hebrews 12.22-24

His dwelling place is with us!

His blood brings salvation to all who believe.

Jesus said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life, he who believes in me though he dies, yet shall he live.”

Next time we will start a new series, beginning with The God Who Sees Me and how God sees us and lifts us when we fall.