This morning, I was studying the various titles of the Lord in Isaiah 43 and 44, and I loved how the phrase "Your" was used when describing the Savior.
"Thus saith the Lord, your Redeemer" (Isa. 43:14)
"I am the Lord, your Holy One" (43:15)
"your King." (43:15)
I often think of Him that way, you know, as my Savior.
Because I have had so many experiences learning Who He is and experiencing His power in my life, my relationship with Him feels personal and intimate.
He is my Friend.
My Savior.
My Redeemer.
I love Him and I know of a surety that He loves me, personally.
So when I next came across the title "The Lord of Hosts" (Isa 44:6), it struck me as a contrasting principle.
I have read this title multiple times and had a basic comprehension of what it meant, but this morning I decided to look up the word "host" in order to better understand it.
Some of the synonyms of "host" are "myriad," "lot," "large number," "great quantity," "crowd," "throng," "mob," and "army."
Dear friends, I am an introvert.
None of those words sound remotely appealing to me.
In fact, massive crowds cause me massive amounts of anxiety.
I generally like people one-on-one, but get me in a crowd and I start having very Scrooge-like thoughts about "decreasing the surplus population."
So, my first reaction on reading that my personal Savior is also the Lord of Hosts (just now beginning to comprehend how massive and overwhelming that title truly is) felt a little like a child whose mother has had another baby.
How can my Savior be my Savior and still have time, energy, and focus enough to be considered the Lord of Hosts?
If He has shown me so much love and caring compassion, so much attention and power in my times of need, how can I trust Him to also show that same detailed love for the other hosts of His children, rule the universe, and still be there for me in my own personal times of need and want?
In Enos' words, "Lord, how is it done?" (Enos 1:7)
Honestly, I don't know.
I am so limited and weak in my scope of understanding.
Everything about me is finite--my levels of energy, my attention, my time and effort. For me to try to comprehend an infinite God feels impossible.
But I am trying.
As I do, I am beginning to get a glimpse of how God can be in the smallest, most intimate details of my life as well as magnificent enough to orchestrate the movements of the hosts among the stars and galaxies of the universe.
I still cannot comprehend it, but I want to.
One thing I do know, however, without a doubt, is that my Savior is just that--my personal Savior.
I have paid the price to come to know Him.
I have sacrificed time, sleep, focus, and energy to study His scriptures and worship Him in my own home and in dedicated chapels and temples.
I have made covenants with Him.
I have gone to Him in my times of deepest personal pain and anguish.
I have waited on Him even when answers I desperately sought did not come how or when I wanted them to.
I still wait on Him as some of those answers-answers to soul-deep, heart-wrenching questions--haven't yetcome.
I have tried to doubt my doubts instead of my faith.
I have cried out to Him in the night.
I have clung to Him when everything else in my life has fallen out from under me.
Yes, I have paid the price to come to know Him personally.
I continue to pay that price--imperfectly, haltingly, but consistently.
And He has been worth the cost.
He has carried me.
He has saved me.
He has visited me in my nighttime longings and strengthened me in my daytime exhaustion.
He has granted me peace, knowledge, and insight during those times where it felt as though I was taking steps into the darkness with no knowledge of what was to come or how things could possibly work out.
He has been there for me when no one else could possibly know what I was going through.
He has not only accepted the mites' worth of offering I have brought to the table, but He has recompensed it generously.
He has blessed me in ways too abundant to recount.
He has healed wounds that I genuinely believed were too deep and jagged to ever possibly heal.
He has softened my hardened heart.
He has opened my narrowed mind and granted me insights and openness I didn't think I was capable of.
He has given me wells of charity to draw from when my own resources felt tapped to their limit.
He has given me love in place of my fear.
He has taken my pain and sanctified it, transformed it into wisdom, compassion, and experience.
He has consecrated my limited efforts and made them somehow enough for what is needed.
He has magnified me.
He has stretched my capacity.
He has transfigured me.
I testify that this is true for me personally.
I have also seen this truth in the lives of my loved ones.
There is no doubt of what His power has done in my life, or in theirs.
Now, this isn't to say that I'm done with the process.
Not even close, my friends.
I still have so much to overcome.
I have an infinite amount left to learn, to experience, to surrender and transform.
But I know He will continue to carry me through this process, as well.
He not only takes me where I am, in all my limited, complicated, messy weakness, but He offers to help me move forward and become more.
Somehow, this experience is both exhausting and joyful all at once.
I witness that He is my Savior.
I also witness that He is yours.
He is both first and last, small enough to notice the most intimate details of your life and be your Redeemer as well as the Lord of Hosts, all in the same moment.
Oh, what a Lord He is.
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