Day 4 God Calls Me by Name in Love

Posted on: March 12, 2025
by: Gerrit Dawson, Senior Pastor

Every day, pray aloud worshipfully this golden thread that weaves through the entire tapestry of God’s intent for us.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD,

when I will make a new covenant with the

house of Israel. . . .

I will put my law within them,

and I will write it on their hearts.

And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

They shall all know me, from the least of them

to the greatest. . . .

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will

remember their sin no more.

(Jeremiah 31:31, 33-34)

Daily Scripture

Isaiah 43:1-7

But now thus says the LORD,

he who created you, O Jacob,

he who formed you, O Israel:

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the LORD your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt as your ransom,

Cush and Seba in exchange for you.

Because you are precious in my eyes,

and honored, and I love you,

I give men in return for you,

peoples in exchange for your life.

Fear not, for I am with you;

I will bring your offspring from the east,

and from the west I will gather you.

I will say to the north, Give up,

and to the south, Do not withhold;

bring my sons from afar

and my daughters from the end of the earth,

everyone who is called by my name,

whom I created for my glory,

whom I formed and made.”

Picking Up the Thread

This passage begins and ends with the LORD’s mighty declaration that he himself made us and formed us. Within these bookends of our createdness, we discover God’s deep, specific personal love.

I still remember my first intense encounter with these words. I was twenty years old and preparing for a long summer trip abroad. There would be deeper waters and hotter fires to encounter in years to come, but what I experienced from Isaiah 43 that summer would be a foundation for trusting God in more intense times.

I would be going first to a country where I did not speak or understand much of the language. My English major skills would be of little use. Then I would be meeting a whole new set of people in an academic environment that could be daunting. I feared making embarrassing mistakes, being shown up as inadequate, or just being lonely. But Isaiah 43 undercut those fears. Let’s pick up a few threads:

I have called you by name, you are mine. God knows me, not as a number but by name. He knows me particularly and individually. I belong to him. I may go far away from my earthly country, but I am never homeless. I never stop belonging to the God who made me and knows me.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. I worried about getting from the plane to the train station. I agonized about keeping all my stuff together, buying a ticket and finding the right train. I feared being seen as a scared kid and rounded up by predators. Indeed, I did make travel mistakes and had embarrassing encounters. There were waters and flames that summer. But after reading Isaiah 43, I never felt abandoned.

You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you. The LORD spoke those words straight to my heart. He loves me. Me as me. Me in my uniqueness, quirkiness, fear and excitement. I matter to God. Knowing me completely because he is my Creator, he loves me truly.

I give . . . peoples in exchange for your life. I know this verse raises the question as to whether some people are more valuable than others in God’s sight. But that wasn’t what struck me back then. What I heard was that in a place where I would be unknown, God would not stop knowing me. Where I could be discarded as a foreigner, God would hold me up with his particular and personal care. He would not forget me when I was in a sea of people who would barely even notice me.

From the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name. Not only did God know my name, he conferred his name upon me. I am his son. I was made, not for myself, but for his glory. I bear the mark of the Creator upon me, and his name is the guarantee that I will be brought home to him. Home from that summer abroad, yes, but also home in Christ forever.

Stitching It In

Not just any old god made us. “God created” is a golden thread for us because of who the God of the Bible is. The LORD I AM is not a remote deity indifferent to our minuscule lives. He is not a tyrant god who made humans to be servile workers. Nor is he a capricious god prone to discard us if we do not amuse him. Ours is the God who knows each of us by name. We are precious to him. He honors us with his full attention. Humbling himself, the LORD risks our rejection by declaring his heart openly: “I love you.” Precisely because he created us in love, our God stays with us through all the twists and trials of this life.

Isaiah 43 is all the more remarkable when we recall that these words were written to a people facing exile. Despite decades of warning through the prophets, the LORD’s own people remained disobedient. They, like we, chased idols and neglected to love. The exile uprooted God’s people from their homes. They lost their freedom, their land, their temple and their way of life. And they deserved it.

Yet God chastened them to change them. The exile was of limited duration. And the LORD never left his people even when they had to leave their homeland. So these affectionate words of assurance came to a people who explicitly did not deserve such care.

God created us. In doing so, he bound himself to us in costly love. Even now, he looks on us with compassion as we encounter the various floods and fires of life. His pledge to be with us is not based on whether the circumstances we find ourselves in are our own stupid fault. What God makes he loves and never stops loving.

Choose a phrase from this passage and speak it directly into a circumstance you face.

Praying Along the Pattern

I spin and strive, bob and weave, never coming to rest

Lest I face the possibility that nothing I do can be enough

To warrant your acceptance, let alone your pleasure.

If I stop, I might fall into the hole of my nothingness.

But you catch me off guard with these words.

Just when I think I will get the exile I deserve,

You gather me to yourself.

You are not embarrassed that you made me.

You say that I am precious, treasured, sought.

When you made me you committed to me.