A New Identity

Names are important to the Lord. In the Bible, we read so many stories of God changing the names of His children after they’d been radically changed by Him. Abram was called Abraham. Jacob was called Israel. Simon was called Peter. Names in Jewish culture are extremely important. They aren’t simply something to call someone by, they are their identity. The meaning of the name is crucial and they become prophecies over the child’s life. When God changed names, He changed the person’s identity totally. He transformed them, gave them new life, hope, and a purpose. He made them who He has created them to be.

This is the good news, dear reader. You don’t have to let your troubled past define your kingdom future. 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” God is still in the business of full transformations!

All you have to do is allow Him to do this. This is difficult for many of us. We live in a generation obsessed with identities. We are encouraged to go forth and find out who we are, what makes us happy, and be unique. Personality tests are increasingly popular, we are searching for our identities, trying so hard to solidify them. Those are not inherently bad things, but we are encouraged to find them though all means but the Lord, and in Him is exactly where they reside.

Allow yourself to be transformed radically today. Allow Him in, hiding no pieces of yourself, and let Him begin the process. Being healed, taught, changed and loved radically and totally by our loving Father is something we have the privilege of experiencing daily.

God has bigger plans for you than you have for yourself, and He created you for a more glorious and wonderful purpose than what you could ever imagine for yourself. He knows us better than we know ourselves. There is a plan for each of us, a divine plan. Trust in His plan, His wisdom, and His love today as He gives you an identity in Him.

Psalm 139 tells us exactly how well He knows each and every one of us:

“You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand--
when I awake, I am still with you.”