Judges 13:17-18 (NIV) Then Manoah inquired of the angel of the Lord, “What is your name, so that we may honor you when your word comes true?” He replied, “Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding.”

After knowing and serving the Lord for many years, I have come to the conclusion that while I have grown deeper and deeper in my intimacy with God, I just have a little knowledge of who He truly is. While I have experienced that the Lord is almighty, awesome and is love personified, those adjectives don’t begin to speak of the totality of who He is and all that He is. While He is great, He is also greater than great. While He is powerful, it is a power that goes beyond my comprehension. Just thinking about the fact that He spoke the world into existence blows my understanding right out of the water. The Lord speaks and mountains quake and tremble. His words have the power of creation. The fact that He always was, is and always will be is also way beyond my grasp.

Manoah was Samson’s father and after having spoken to the Angel of the Lord, which is God in a form that humans can see and speak to and not die from the experience, he didn’t know exactly who he was talking to. Then when Manoah saw the Angel of the Lord rise up in the flames of the sacrifice that he had offered to Him as a burnt offering, it finally dawned on Him that the Angel that He had spoken to was actually the God of all creation (this was after Manoah had asked what His name was). At this, Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground and got very afraid, thinking that they would die for having seen God. But that was not the case as the Lord had provided the way to be made known without putting their lives at risk as He did when He came to the earth as Jesus, the Messiah.

It’s good for me to remember that God is beyond anything that I can imagine. He Himself says in His Word that His ways and thoughts are very much higher than our ways and thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). Many times, we cannot understand what God is doing or how He is doing it. We get hurt and confused many times with how the Lord is dealing with us because we, without realizing it, try to bring Him down to our level. We forget the magnitude of who He is. We forget that His name is “beyond understanding.” Let’s keep that in the forefront of our hearts and minds so that we will not get thrown off with what we don’t understand about Him. What we should concentrate on and understand is how much He loves us and that He works everything together for our good. Let that be enough for now until we are finally with Him in heaven and will have an eternity to get to know Him more and more.

Pastor Joey Vazquez