How I Learned My Name

The day before my oldest daughter turned one I was reading the story of Samson as part of a blog project I was working on. As I read the story it stood out to me in a new way, and I couldn't move past the details. This caused me to begin looking for similar stories throughout the Bible, and I ended up finding two others. These stories began to fascinate me like they never had before. I noticed the similarities and differences; I focused on what was unique and began to look at how these all fit together.

The next day when I took my daughter to the doctor for her one year check up, and a shot (watching my princess get a shot breaks my heart because it's necessary pain but it's still pain). Afterwards we had some time to kill so we just went and walked around the mall. I'm not a huge fan of the mall, but it was March in northeast Ohio, so it was the best option for walking. We went into the book store, I don't know why but book stores are something I enjoy even though I don't buy any books from them usually, but as we were there I noticed that one of my favorite author's, John Eldredge, had a new book out. The title of the book directly corresponded with what I had read in the Bible the previous day. I looked to heaven and said to God, "You're trying to tell me something aren't You?"

At this point I decided that I needed to explore this a little more. There was something going on, something God was trying to tell me. At first I thought it was just a cool idea, something that would make an interesting couple blog posts, maybe a future sermon series, possibly even a book (this third option is where I've landed, thus the reason I'm being so vague. I've started to actually write it but life has happened and I'm reduced to a lot of note taking and processing.)

I went home and began to explore this idea over the next few days, getting really excited about it, and even sharing the idea with some of my closest friends. Over the next few months the idea didn't fade, but just kept growing in intensity and clarity, and I began to feel that God was trying to give me more than just a writing topic. I began to realize that God was telling me my name.

The final realization I had was when God told me to buy a sword. I had bought a replica Spartan shield years earlier. I had always wanted one, and then I found an insane deal on one, and my ex-wife wasn't around to tell me not to, so for my birthday that year I bought myself a shield. At that time I was still trying to fight for my marriage, trying to bring about restoration, and I would hold my shield up, get in a battle stance, and pray against Satan. One time when I did this, I felt that I was being mocked because I didn't have a sword. At the time I couldn't afford one, and I'm not big on collecting stuff so I had never planned on getting one, but a few years later I felt that God was leading me to buy a sword. I went back and forth with Him on this, because I really didn't have extra money, but He wouldn't leave me alone about it, and so I began to look, and I found a Lakonia short sword, also on sale, and got ready to purchase it.

I got it sharpened, there was no question about that, if a sword isn't sharp it's not a sword. This does make displaying it tricky at this point since my girls are so young, it ends up packed away on top of a closet so they don't accidentally find it, but one day I'll be able to display it with my shield. The other option it gave me was for engraving initials. I wasn't going to put my own initials on there, and at that point God had been leading me in the direction of my real name, my true identity from Him, and the final leading I got was to put those initials on there. I was hesitant to do this, but I couldn't get past the sense that I needed to, and so I did.

I know I'm being vague on a lot with this, and I'm sorry. I go back and forth with how much of my personal story to share, just because it is so deeply meaningful to me, and it's still very fresh. So much of this is only known to my group brothers and the few men who have walked through the past few years with me. This past weekend I shared it in detail with someone outside of that circle for the first time, and that was good.

Summing up, God revealed my name to me by making a familiar Bible story stand out in an unfamiliar way. It was something He kept bringing up to me, and something that really stirred my heart. The initials I put on my sword would become the name that went on my dog tags, and it's the name reveals who God says I am.


Fight the lion, 1 Peter 5.1-11

TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!

I'm sorry that this is being posted later in the day, it's been a weird week and I've been strangely unmotivated and kind of uninspired. Blogs will still be posted Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and hopefully I'm back to the original schedule time wise by next week.