The name of God

This last week my devotional has been on "The Name", as in Gods name.  When I saw that this was the topic for the week I was a little bit confused because God has many names.  What my book, "Praying the names of God" by Ann Spangler was referring to was when we pray, "in Gods name." 

The bible tells us of the temple that Solomon built and then it tells us that in this temple God would dwell, it would be a place where His people would pray and be heard. In 1 Kings 8: 22 -  9:3 Solomon prays to God and asks Him to hear the prays of his people and the foreigners of the land. He prays for healing and forgiveness and he prays that the people who come and pray there know that it bears Gods name. God responds and says that his heart and eyes will always be there and I will put my name there.



What does God mean when He says that He's put His name there? It means so much more that just writing, "God" on a wall.  When we refer to Gods name we are referring to everything that we associate God with.  We associate Gods name with power, Glory, faithfulness, holiness, trust, honest etc.  So when then people went to the temple to pray to God it meant that God was there in His fullness, he was there as healer, father, faithful one, powerful one.



We all know that the temple that Solomon no longer stands in Jerusalem, it was bashed down and destroyed years ago.  So the question is how is this applicable now if there is no temple for us to go to where Gods name is. It's very applicable, in the new testament Paul reminds us that our bodies are the temple of the Lord. This means that God has written His name on us. (I was totally blown away by this).  

From what I understand from this is that, God has written His name on us, meaning that He is in us, (the Holy Spirit), so therefore all of Gods power, authority, holiness etc is in us.  God fills us with all of this, because He is it.  When we pray to His name we are praying to Him, when we call on His name we are calling his presence, when we act in His name we act with His authority and when we fight in His name we fight with His power.  We need to do this in faith, we need to believing all of those things when we pray and God will totally rock and blow our minds away.

God is with us ALL the time, when we pray to Him we are praying to the God who is dwelling in us and around us, the God who hears our prayers and answers them.