God Almighty at Ninety-Nine

Abram was ninety-nine years old. Let that sink in before you read anything else. Twenty-four years earlier God had promised to make him into a great nation. Since then he had moved his whole household, waited, worried, tried to help God out with Hagar, and waited some more. Sarah was well past childbearing. Every year the promise looked a little more like a nice story and a little less like a plan.

Then the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty.” In Hebrew, El Shaddai. Scholars still debate where the word Shaddai comes from, and honestly we do not need to settle that to get the point. Look at when God uses this name. He uses it at the exact moment when everything Abram could do had run out. When the calendar said no, when the doctor would have said no, when Abram's own body said no, God said, I am the Almighty.

Some of you are living in the twenty-four years. You prayed about something a long time ago. Maybe a prodigal child. Maybe a marriage. Maybe a calling you were sure God put on your heart. And the years have piled up. You have not stopped believing, exactly, but you have stopped expecting. This name is for you. God Almighty is not on your timeline, and He is not limited by what is left in your tank.

Notice what God says right after He gives His name. “Walk before Me and be blameless.” The Almighty does not just make promises. He calls for a life. Not a perfect life that earns the promise, because Abram had already blown it more than once. The covenant starts with God, not with Abram. But a life lived in the open before God, honest and wholehearted. Grace always comes first. Obedience is how we walk in it.

Then Abram fell facedown. That is the right posture. Before the Almighty, you do not negotiate. You worship. And while Abram was on his face, God kept talking. “I will establish My covenant.” “I will make you exceedingly fruitful.” “I will be their God.” Count the times God says I will in these verses. The weight of this whole thing is on God's shoulders, not Abram's.

Then God changed his name. Abram became Abraham, because God said, “I have made you a father of many nations.” Look at the tense. Made. Past tense. Abraham did not have the son yet. But when God Almighty says it, it is as good as done. Paul picks up on this in Romans 4. He says Abraham believed “the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not yet exist.” Every morning Abraham had to introduce himself with a name that sounded ridiculous. Father of many. With no child in the tent.

That is what faith looks like. It is not pretending. It is trusting God's word more than what you can see. And God came through. A year later Isaac was born, the son of laughter. But the promise was bigger than one baby. Through Abraham's line would come Jesus, the true offspring, the One in whom all the families of the earth are blessed. If you belong to Christ by faith, you are part of that many. You are the fulfillment of a promise God made to a ninety-nine year old man.

So bring God Almighty your impossible thing this morning. Do not shrink it to fit your expectations. Bring it the size it really is. Then get on your face, and get up and walk before Him. The God who raised Jesus from the dead is not running out of time.