I love learning the different names of God. My favorite is Jehovah Shammah (which I wrote about here). What I love about the different names of God is that He earned those names – they each describe a different aspect of His character, and many times are tied to a specific action. One of the names of God is El Shaddai, which translates to “Almighty” or “All-Sufficient”. The key scripture for this name comes from Genesis 17:1-2 when God tells 99-year-old Abram that He will greatly increase his numbers (children). The idea behind this name is that God’s power and provision is “more than enough” to meet any need. He is victorious over every need we could ever have. (Wow, let’s remember THAT when we pray!)

I’ve been thinking about times in my life when the Lord has been El Shaddai – a provider of more than enough. It seems like ages ago, but one of my favorite stories so clearly had the Lord’s fingerprints all over it. It was a Saturday night in 2012, and we were going through our normal evening bedtime routine with our kids, who were ages 7, 5, and 3. After putting on her pajamas, my oldest daughter came to me after her bath and said she needed to go up a size in her cartoon character panties. As someone who likes to be prepared, I went to our “supply closet” and brought out a brand-new package of the next size up undergarments for her. I told her I’d wash them and they would be ready the next day. It was really a non-event; it was only underwear, but I had an odd and unexplainable feeling of joy and gratitude at granting her request immediately.

As usual, the next morning our family went to church. However, it wasn’t a typical Sunday as our church invited ministry partners throughout our city to set up booths and talk to our members about how they could volunteer. I had been asked to help at a booth for a ministry called Brother Bill’s Helping Hand. I got to the table and made small talk with the executive director of Brother Bill’s. I knew they provided much needed assistance to families in West Dallas through their food pantry, job training, and parenting classes. As we were chatting, I asked what the most pressing issue was they were facing and the executive director’s face told me I was about to hear an answer I wasn’t ready for.

She told me she has regular meetings with the school nurses in their surrounding zip codes. The school nurses relayed to her a surprising need for elementary school students – underwear. Yes, underwear. The families in these zip codes struggled to buy clothes and food for their families, so many times they made the decision to forgo spending money on underwear. I immediately thought about the exchange I had with our daughter the night before. She simply asked for new underwear and it was easily provided.

So many kids at an elementary school going without underwear just didn’t sit well with me. My kids were elementary school-age, so this hit home. I wanted to provide the school with enough underwear to have their own “supply closet” so no child would be left with a bare behind. By that evening, I not only had the six other families in our community group* on board to donate underwear to this school, but we challenged two other community groups (about 20 families in all) to join us. For the challenge we kept it simple. We had a month to gather as many brand new pairs of underwear as possible. The winning group got to call themselves the winners (again, we kept it simple). However, that was enough to set each group in motion to acquire as much underwear as possible.

We prayed for the Lord to do a mighty work and multiply our efforts to provide enough underwear for the elementary school to have a drawer of drawers for any child, any size. We prayed for the Lord to give us creativity to meet the needs of this school and these precious kids.

Each time I went to Target or Walmart (which was often back then), I would buy several packages of underwear to donate. I also engaged the neighbors on our block, and they were generous with their donations. Our extended family members were happy to participate, too. We had a guy in our community group who was a personal trainer, and he put a box at the front of his gym with a note about our underwear goal. His box was overflowing almost every day of the challenge. There was another guy who had a friend who was a wholesaler and was happy to donate a crazy amount of underwear.

Our prayer for God to provide enough underwear to fill the need was met the way God so often meets our prayers. He answered with more than enough. By the end of our challenge, we literally needed pallets and forklifts to move the boxes of underwear to a warehouse. Yes, we then had to solve for storing all the underwear God provided. But that’s what He does. “Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it” (Malachi 3:10). That is the God we are dealing with. He is the God of more than enough.

He is the God of 12 basketfuls of bread leftover after feeding 5,000 people (John 6:12-13).

He is the God of overflowing wine made from water (John 2:1-11).

He is the God who made a woman of five “husbands” her town’s first missionary (John 4).

He is the God of clothes that don’t wear out and feet that don’t swell after walking 40 years in the desert (Nehemiah 9:21).

He is the God of never-ending oil and flour for the widow and her son (1 Kings 17:7-16). 

Through the community group challenge, we collected thousands of pairs of underwear for that elementary school. I know the Lord orchestrated the exchange with my daughter the night before to soften my heart to the need I would hear about through Brother Bill’s Helping Hand. But what blows me away the most is how over and above that Lord met the obscure need. Even though this happened more than a decade ago, I think often of this example of El Shaddai.

And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19).

Dear Lord, You are El Shaddai – provider of MORE THAN ENOUGH. We cannot bring a need to You that is too big for You. Thank You for allowing us to participate in blessing others. May we be confident in Your ability and willingness to do more than we can ask or imagine. I know You love to overwhelm us with Your goodness. Let us always remember Your generosity when we pray. Praise Your Holy Name. Maranatha! Amen.

*Community groups are groups of 6 or so families from our church who meet regularly. Some churches call their groups “small groups” or “life groups”, etc.