3.059 Here am I - Hineni

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as savory salt.

Hello, my friends. It's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.

Warning: don't listen to this episode if you don't want to do a new little challenge. It's been a while since we had a Savory Salt challenge. And since you're going to listen to the episode anyway, just stick around because you've got to know what the challenge is before you decide if you're going to try it out.

Right? We're reading this week Genesis chapters 18 through 23. We're going to stay inside of Genesis chapter 22 here with the incident with Abraham and Isaac because there's so much to divide and dig into here.

But one just wouldn't leave me alone as I studied through it this week. It pops up several times inside of Genesis chapter 22. It happens, I think, three times by my count.

Could be more if you go through this. But we're going to look at a phrase that Abraham says over and over and over again. And it's a phrase, again, another type of a Jesus Christ type response here.

The one I'm going to use, you're going to see it in verse 1, verse 7, I think it is, and verse 11. We're going to use verse 11 for today. This is right in the moment where Abraham is, you know, stretching forth his hand to use the knife on his son, right?

And verse 11 says this: And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, "Here am I." Now, "Here am I" stuck out to me. He says it to the angel.

He says it to Isaac. And he says it to God at the beginning of the chapter here. So, I guess the proper order is he says it to God, and then he says it to Isaac, and then he says it to the angel.

But whenever you get a phrase like that, I wanted to know the direct translation of that. What our oldest translation or what other translations of that were. And so I dug into it, and I landed inside of the Hebrew word for that translation.

The Hebrew word—forgive me for my pronunciations, I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but I'm going to do my best here. The Hebrew word is Hineni. Maybe it's Hineni, but I think it's Hineni.

Hineni. And this is what it says about the description of Hineni. This is Abraham's response.

This single powerful word is literally built from Hina, which is behold, lo, see, plus a first-person suffix. The word-for-word translation, right? It's like, "behold me" or "hear me." Right?

It's like, I'm right here. Here I am. It's Abraham's immediate, wholehearted reply.

He's fully present. He's fully attentive. He's ready for whatever comes next.

And this is, I love this part here. It says, "This is not a casual word." It's loaded with surrender and availability. I, your host, want you to think of just one way and try it out for—I don't know—three days, 72 hours.

Give it a shot to turn to the Lord and say, "Here am I." See if the promptings increase. See if the opportunities to serve increase. See if the personal revelation increases.

That's a challenge for you and for me to go all in, increase our savory salt here over the next few days, and truly turn to the Lord in any inspiration we receive and say, "Here am I." Sign me up. I'm ready to listen and to do what I'm doing. I love my new understanding of the word Hineni from the story of Abraham and Isaac.

That's all for today, my friends. You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt. We'll be here tomorrow, and we hope you are too.