New names

*Thanks to Amy Driskill for pitching in as today’s guest contributor. Happy spring time, everybody!*

Spring time is a time of growth and renewal.  I look around me now, and I see wildflowers popping up all over my yard.   As I sit here, I think about how God has changed me.  It made me curious about how God changes people.  In particular, I became curious about name changes.  Every year for the past four years I’ve volunteered at Royal Family Kids Camp.  We have a song that sticks with me throughout the year.  The words are:

I will change your name.  You shall no longer be called wounded, outcast, lonely, or afraid.

I will change your name.  Your new name shall be confidence, joyfulness, overcoming one.

Faithfulness, friend of God, one who seeks My face.

This song resonates with me because I was so wounded lonely and afraid.  I was all of those things.  I was all too familiar with the hurt look in the eyes of the children at camp.  I had been where they are.  I spent years in that dark lonely place.  It took the light of God and the renewing power of His grace that transformed me into one who is confident and joyful.

In the Bible, God changed Abram into the faithful servant Abraham and Sarai into Sarah, which means princess.  It is fitting considering that she would be the mother of the tribes of Israel.  Paul had a significant change in his life as he walked down the road.  Saul was a man whose goal in life was to kill Jews, but after an encounter with God he was a changed man.  He became the great apostle Paul bringing many into the family of God.

You see, he doesn’t just change our names.  He adopts us into his family and makes us new.   That which was lost and broken was brought into his presence and was not only restored, but we are made into a new beautiful creation as a child of God.