The All-Sufficient One
I AM Series: From Burning Bush to Bethlehem
Main Text: Genesis 17:1
Supporting Texts: Genesis 18:14, Luke 1:37
Theme: God's Unlimited Power
Introduction
Abraham sits outside his tent at ninety-nine years old. He stares across the desert sand. Thirteen years have passed since God last spoke to him. His body grows weaker each day. Sarah passed childbearing age long ago. The promise of a son seems impossible now.
Then God breaks the silence. He appears to this old man and declares something that echoes through history: "I am El Shaddai." This Hebrew phrase means "God of more than enough." The all-sufficient One who possesses unlimited power to accomplish His purposes.
You face your own impossible situations today. You wonder if God's promises apply to your specific problems. You question whether you have waited too long for breakthrough. You feel your own limitations mock God's power.
El Shaddai's revelation to Abraham speaks directly into your impossibilities. This story teaches you about God's unchanging nature. His ability to accomplish what seems utterly impossible through human strength. When you grasp who El Shaddai is, you begin to understand something transformative. Your limitations become the stage where God's unlimited power displays itself most clearly.
The God who revealed Himself to Moses as "I AM WHO I AM" shows Abraham another dimension of His character. El Shaddai specializes in impossible situations. He works best when human resources are exhausted. He displays His greatest power through your greatest weakness.
1. When You've Waited Too Long (Genesis 16:16-17:1)
Thirteen Years of Silence
Genesis 16:16 tells us Abraham was eighty-six when Ishmael was born through Hagar. Genesis 17 opens with Abraham at ninety-nine. Thirteen years passed without a single recorded word from God. Think about this silence. Thirteen years without hearing from the One who promised to make you a great nation.
You struggle when God doesn't answer your prayers in thirteen days. Abraham waited thirteen years. During this time, he watched his body deteriorate. He observed Sarah move further beyond any natural possibility of pregnancy. Every sunrise reminded him that God's promise seemed more impossible than the day before.
This silence was not punishment. God uses seasons of quiet to deepen your dependence on His character rather than His communications. Abraham learned to trust not what God had said, but who God is. The silence taught him that God's timing doesn't match your expectations. God's faithfulness transcends your understanding.
God often remains silent when you need Him most. You interpret His silence as absence. Abraham learned to interpret God's silence as preparation. The quiet seasons prepare you to receive what seems impossible.
Abraham at 99
Abraham faces the mathematics of impossibility at ninety-nine. Romans 4:19 describes his body as "good as dead" for fathering children. Sarah is eighty-nine, decades past menopause. From every human perspective, the promise of a biological heir has become a biological impossibility.
God chooses this precise moment to reveal His nature. He doesn't appear as "God the Encourager" though He encourages. He doesn't come as "God the Comforter" though He comforts. Instead, He reveals Himself as El Shaddai. The all-sufficient One whose power operates without limits.
This timing teaches you something crucial about God's character. El Shaddai doesn't work alongside your strength. He specializes in working through your weakness. When Abraham's strength was gone, when Sarah's womb was barren, when human possibility was exhausted, El Shaddai stepped forward. He demonstrated His unlimited power.
Your weakness doesn't disqualify you from God's power. Your weakness positions you to experience His power. When you reach the end of your resources, you arrive at the beginning of His.
Our Impossible Situations
Abraham's story mirrors your impossible situations. You face a marriage that seems beyond repair despite years of prayer. You watch a child walk further from faith with each conversation. You battle an illness that has exhausted medical options. You struggle with financial pressures that have no earthly solution.
You wonder if God's promises in Scripture apply to your specific situation. The enemy whispers that your circumstances are different. Your problems are too big. You have waited too long. But El Shaddai's revelation to Abraham teaches you something different.
Impossible situations are not obstacles to God's power. They are opportunities for God's power to be displayed most clearly. The widow of Zarephath had oil and flour for one final meal before death (1 Kings 17:12). Her impossibility became the stage for God's miraculous provision.
The disciples faced 5,000 hungry people with five loaves and two fish (Matthew 14:17). Their inadequacy became the platform for Jesus's multiplication miracle. Your impossible situations serve the same purpose. They strip away your self-reliance. They create space for El Shaddai to demonstrate His all-sufficiency.
When you exhaust your resources, strategies, and strength, you position yourself to experience the unlimited power of the all-sufficient One. Your emptiness becomes the container for His fullness.
2. I Am El Shaddai (Genesis 17:1-2, 2 Corinthians 12:9)
The God of More Than Enough
When God declares "I am El Shaddai" in Genesis 17:1, He reveals something profound about His essential nature. El Shaddai doesn't possess enough power to handle your situations. He possesses more than enough power to exceed your greatest expectations. This God doesn't barely manage to fulfill His promises. He does "exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20).
The Hebrew concept behind El Shaddai carries the idea of inexhaustible resources. A nursing mother has more than sufficient nourishment for her child. El Shaddai has more than sufficient power for every promise He makes. His resources are never depleted, never diminished, never insufficient for the task at hand.
This revelation must have transformed Abraham's thinking. For thirteen years, he calculated the impossibility of God's promise based on his own diminishing resources. But El Shaddai's declaration shifted the equation completely. The question was no longer whether Abraham had enough strength to father a child. The question became whether El Shaddai had enough power to fulfill His promise.
El Shaddai always has more than enough. Your situation never depletes His resources. Your problems never exhaust His power. Your circumstances never overwhelm His ability to act.
Power to Fulfill Promises
El Shaddai's power is not abstract. His power is purposefully directed toward fulfilling His promises. Genesis 17:2 immediately connects God's self-revelation as the all-sufficient One with His commitment to multiply Abraham exceedingly. God's unlimited power is covenant power. Promise-keeping power. Purpose-fulfilling power.
Every promise God makes in Scripture is backed by the unlimited power of El Shaddai. When He promises to supply all your needs according to His riches in glory (Philippians 4:19), El Shaddai's all-sufficiency guarantees that promise. When He promises that all things work together for good for those who love Him (Romans 8:28), El Shaddai's unlimited ability to orchestrate circumstances secures that promise.
This connection between God's power and His promises should transform how you read Scripture. You are not reading wishful thinking or motivational speeches. You are reading declarations backed by unlimited power. When Jesus says, "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28), El Shaddai's ability to provide guarantees that invitation.
Understanding this principle helps you distinguish between claiming God's actual promises and attempting to manipulate God through presumption. El Shaddai's power is directed toward fulfilling what He has promised. His power is not directed toward granting your every desire. This keeps you anchored in God's revealed will rather than drifting into presumptuous demands.
Strength in Our Weakness
Paul understood El Shaddai's nature when he wrote about God's response to his thorn in the flesh: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). This principle reveals how El Shaddai's all-sufficiency operates in your life. His strength doesn't supplement your strength. His strength is made perfect in your weakness.
This paradox challenges your natural thinking. You typically view weakness as disqualifying you from God's use or blessing. But El Shaddai's revelation teaches the opposite. Your weakness becomes the perfect backdrop for displaying His unlimited power. When you are weak, then He is strong. When you are insufficient, then He is all-sufficient.
Abraham's experience illustrates this principle perfectly. His aged body and Sarah's barren womb were not obstacles to overcome. They were the precise conditions that would make El Shaddai's power undeniable. When Isaac was born to a one-hundred-year-old father and a ninety-year-old mother, no one attributed the miracle to human strength. El Shaddai alone received the glory.
This same principle operates in your life today. The areas where you feel most inadequate, most hopeless, most weak, become the areas where El Shaddai's all-sufficiency displays itself most clearly. Your weakness doesn't disqualify you from God's power. Your weakness qualifies you to experience His power.
Stop hiding your weakness. Start bringing your weakness to El Shaddai. He specializes in making His strength perfect through your insufficiency.
3. Walking Blameless Before Him (Genesis 17:1, Philippians 4:13)
Dependence Not Perfection
When El Shaddai reveals Himself to Abraham, He immediately follows this revelation with an instruction: "Walk before Me and be blameless" (Genesis 17:1). Understanding this command in light of El Shaddai's all-sufficiency prevents misinterpretation. This is not a call to moral perfection through human effort. This is an invitation to complete dependence on His unlimited power.
The Hebrew word for "blameless" (tamim) doesn't mean sinless perfection. The word means wholehearted devotion or integrity. This is the same word used to describe animals offered in sacrifice. They were not morally perfect, but they were complete, without defect for their purpose. Abraham was called to walk in wholehearted dependence on El Shaddai's all-sufficiency rather than relying on his own strategies.
This distinction transforms how you relate to El Shaddai today. He is not calling you to achieve perfection before you access His power. He is calling you to abandon your self-sufficiency and walk in complete dependence on His all-sufficiency. The "blamelessness" He desires is found in your uncompromising trust in His unlimited power, not in your flawless performance through human effort.
Abraham's "blamelessness" was not demonstrated through sinless living. Scripture records several failures in his walk with God. His blamelessness was demonstrated through his ultimate trust in El Shaddai's promise, even when circumstances made that promise seem impossible. Romans 4:20-21 describes this: "He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform."
Living in His Sufficiency
Living in El Shaddai's sufficiency means shifting from self-reliance to God-reliance in every area of your life. This is not a spiritual principle for "religious" activities only. This is a practical reality that transforms how you approach work, relationships, finances, health, and every other aspect of human experience.
Philippians 4:13 captures this: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Paul is not claiming unlimited human ability through divine enhancement. He is declaring complete dependence on Christ's unlimited sufficiency for whatever circumstances he faces. The context shows Paul learned to be content in plenty and in want, in comfort and in suffering, because Christ's strength was all-sufficient for every situation.
This means bringing your inadequacies to El Shaddai rather than trying to overcome them through human effort alone. When facing a difficult conversation, acknowledge your insufficiency and depend on His wisdom instead of preparing arguments. When confronting financial pressures, confess your limitations and trust His provision instead of strategizing solutions alone. When battling sin patterns, admit your weakness and rely on His transforming power instead of exerting willpower.
Living in His sufficiency also means accepting His methods and timing rather than insisting on your own. Abraham had to abandon his plan to make Ishmael the heir and trust El Shaddai's plan to provide Isaac. You must release your strategies for accomplishing God's purposes and trust His all-sufficient power to work in ways that exceed your understanding.
Your job is not to figure out how God will fulfill His promises. Your job is to trust that El Shaddai has more than enough power to fulfill what He has promised.
Trusting His Timing
No aspect of trusting El Shaddai challenges you more than accepting His timing. Abraham waited twenty-five years from the first promise to Isaac's birth. During those years, especially the thirteen years of silence, trusting God's timing required extraordinary faith in El Shaddai's character.
God's timing often seems inefficient from human perspective. You wonder why He doesn't answer immediately when His power is unlimited. But understanding El Shaddai's all-sufficiency helps you recognize something important. His timing is always perfect, not just His power. He delays not because He lacks power to act, but because His wisdom determines the perfect moment for His power to be displayed.
Abraham's story illustrates this beautifully. Had Isaac been born when Abraham was seventy-five, the miracle might have been attributed to natural causes. Had he been born when Abraham was eighty-five, observers might have credited good health and favorable circumstances. But born to a one-hundred-year-old father and a ninety-year-old mother, Isaac's birth could only be attributed to El Shaddai's supernatural power.
Your impossible situations often follow similar patterns. God allows circumstances to reach the point where only His intervention brings resolution. This is not divine cruelty. This is divine wisdom ensuring that when breakthrough comes, His unlimited power receives undivided glory.
Trusting El Shaddai's timing means continuing to obey His revealed will even when His promised outcomes seem delayed. Trust His character when His methods are mysterious. Believe His all-sufficient power is actively working even when you see no immediate evidence of that work.
Your timeline is not God's timeline (2 Peter 3:8). Your understanding is not God's understanding. But His power is always sufficient, and His timing is always perfect (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
Conclusion
Abraham sits outside his tent at ninety-nine years old. What changed in that divine encounter was not Abraham's circumstances. He was still old, Sarah was still barren, the promise still seemed impossible. What changed was Abraham's understanding of who God is and what God does.
El Shaddai's revelation to Abraham continues to speak into your impossible situations today. The God who possessed unlimited power to give Isaac to elderly parents possesses unlimited power to address whatever impossibility you face. The God who fulfilled His covenant promise to Abraham despite insurmountable obstacles is the same God who stands ready to fulfill His promises to you despite your current circumstances.
This doesn't mean God will remove every difficulty or grant every request. This means El Shaddai's all-sufficient power is available to accomplish His perfect will in your life, regardless of how impossible that will might seem from human perspective. His power is not limited by your age, your resources, your past failures, or your present circumstances.
The cross of Jesus Christ stands as the ultimate demonstration of El Shaddai's all-sufficient power. When humanity's situation seemed hopeless, when sin had created an impossible chasm between us and God, when death reigned supreme, El Shaddai's power accomplished the impossible. Through Christ's death and resurrection, He provided salvation that no human effort could achieve, forgiveness that no human merit could earn, and eternal life that no human power could secure.
Living in light of El Shaddai's revelation means approaching each day with confidence in His unlimited sufficiency rather than anxiety about your limitations. Bring your impossibilities to Him in prayer, knowing He specializes in accomplishing what seems utterly impossible through human strength. Walk in wholehearted dependence on His power rather than struggling in self-reliant effort.
The same El Shaddai who appeared to Abraham in his impossibility appears to you in yours. He has not changed. His power has not diminished. His commitment to His people has not wavered. What seemed impossible to Abraham became the foundation of God's covenant people. What seems impossible to you today may become the platform for God's greatest work in your life.
Take-Home Question: What impossibility do you need to trust God with?
You face a relationship that seems beyond repair. You have a dream that appears unrealistic given your current circumstances. You battle a sin pattern that feels too strong to overcome, a financial situation that has no visible solution, or a health concern that has exhausted medical options.
Whatever your impossibility, remember that you serve El Shaddai. The all-sufficient One whose power knows no limits. Bring your impossibility to Him not as a burden to bear, but as an opportunity for His unlimited power to be displayed. Trust His timing, depend on His sufficiency, and walk in wholehearted faith that what He has promised, He is also able to perform.
El Shaddai is more than enough for whatever you face today. His sufficiency is your security, His power is your peace, and His faithfulness is your foundation. Walk forward in confidence, knowing that the all-sufficient One goes before you, works within you, and will accomplish His perfect will through you.
"Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." (Ephesians 3:20-21)
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Blessings,
Pastor JM Raja Lawrence
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
email: lawrencejmr@gmail.com
Mobile: +91 9933250072
