Don't forget the copyright

So here comes the third part of the series, I hope that after finishing this post you will understand what the title has to do with it.

"You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses the name" (Exodus 20:7)

So firstly let’s talk about some Names that God has. There is a whole list, but I’ll pick out some in order not to write too much. For example we have ‚JEHOVAH-ROHI‘ (Psalm 23:1) ‚The Lord my shepherd‘. This name is beautiful because it shows how much God wants to look for us, how much he cares. Like a Sheppard he doesn’t want any of his flock to get lost. A  second one is ‚JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH‘ (Ezekiel 48:35)‚The Lord who is present‘ which says that, unlike Nietzsche said, God isn’t death, but Nietzsche is instead. And last but not least ‚EL-SHADDAI‘(Genesis 17:1,Psalm 91:1) ‚God Almighty‘, which sums ist up pretty well.

But let’s talk about what the verse really means, because this is really bad for me. It means every time I say something like 'oh my god', or 'holy shit' or anything along those lines, I do wrong, and God can hold me responsible for that. The thing is, I'm not really good at holding back such things, they slip out of my mouth without me even realizing what I just said. God wants us to respect him, respect his holy name. I wouldn't shout 'Oh my Carolina' either, would I? To know his name, to say it out loud, is a privilege and we need to honor him with it, which usually is just really hard.

I thought that this was the end, that I couldn't say more about this part when a different thought hit me. What if God not only wants us to keep his name out of some things, like swearing, but wants to be credited on others? Maybe it's not just we should not misuse it, but on the same time use it when it should be used. In the name of the Lord there is so much, a song says there is freedom, love, acceptance... The list could go on forever. Plus God wants to be involved with us. He is the creator of everything, he made you and me. Is it impossible that he wants to hear a thank you from time to time? He had a lot of work in making this earth, so maybe he wants us to acknowledge what he did. Sure, he doesn't need it, but I don't need compliments either, but still you can make me happy with it. As we saw earlier, his name is more than powerful and so we should stop talking about coincidences or even fortune, because in the end it’s about God’s plan, it’s on his purpose. He should be given the credit for it.

Isn't this part of worship, giving honor to the one who deserves it?  I guess so. For a long time worship to me was just singing, or maybe playing an instrument, but there is much more behind that as I found out in a conversation some weeks ago. Maybe I’ll write about ist in another post, but I guess that we now have finished what I had to say about the third commandment.

Cheerio