Form versus Function (5 of 6)

Shane Willard

Page 10 of 10
He just made something up: yud, he, vav, he; but if you put the pictures on it, what does it do? Yud is the upraised hands; He is revelation; Vav is a hook; and then He is revelation. So God's name, at its essence means this: “As we worship Him, revelation gets connected to revelation”. It's glory-to-glory, never-ending, perpetual glory-to-glory.

How about the name Rapha, Jehovah Rapha? What letters do you hear there? Rapha? You've got: Resh + Fe + He. Resh is the giant head; Fe is a mouth; and He is ‘to reveal something’. So the word ‘Jehovah, My Healer’ means: “the highest person is speaking revelation”.

Jireh, the word provision, or provider, it's: Yud - up raised hand; Resh - giant head; He - revelation. In other words: “as I put God in His proper place, the highest person reveals Himself to me”. That's provision.

How about Shalom, the word peace, Shalom? Shin + Lamek + Mem. Shin is: teeth (or name); Lamek is: a cattle goad, or a prod; and Mem is: ‘powerful water’, or ‘from something’. So the word ‘shalom’ means this: “the name is prodding me to power”. In other words, the most powerful state you can be in, is the state of peace inside. That's where you can harness all your power.

Kanaf: Kof + Nun + Fe. “Covering is multiplied out of somebody's mouth”. That was the corner of their garments. That's where the tassels were.

The initial word for Prayer, in Genesis 4, is Tefilla. It had three letters: the front of the head, the back of the head, and then the ox head going into a yoke. So prayer, to a Hebrew person is: “Turning of the head, in order to face the One who can bear the burden”.

It's all about being God conscious, not sin conscious. That is prayer, so what would our prayer-life look like? My brothers and sisters, leaders of God's biggest idea, what would our prayer life look like, if we spent more time becoming aware of God, becoming aware of everything that's inside of us; and knowing that we could take it out of ourselves, and place it onto somebody else? What kind of power would that bring?

If I could have shared anything with you (for an hour), in terms of how to study your Bible more effectively, it would have been on that: that we should be people who are training ourself to see function, not form. And then you can use the letters for every single word in the whole Bible that's written in Hebrew.