When God looks at you, He sees what He created you to be. He does not see your weaknesses or short comings; instead, He sees His original blue print of you, His end product, His perfect will.Take father Abraham for instance, he was named Abram by his parents, but God always saw Him as Abraham. Abram means ‘High father’ which is great, his parents definitely got that right, because he was a great man of God, a priest and a prophet, definitely a high father, but in Genesis 17:5, God confirmed his name and his destiny by calling him Abraham and asking him not to answer to the name Abram anymore. You see, his destiny was tied to his name in that his name confirmed his destiny.
God told Abram that he will be the father of many nations while Abram was childless at a ripe old age. You see God wanted Abram to be confronted with his destiny every moment of his life, so that he could work towards achieving it. Write the vision and make it plain! Sometimes the best way to remember who you are and what you are about is by your name. God did not want Abram to see himself as just the high father anymore, no! He was created to be more than that, he was created to be the father of many nations, but how was this going to happen if he didn’t even have a child of his own?
God had to deal with Abraham’s mind. If Abraham heard the prophecy regularly enough, he would believe it, he would become it and therefore fulfill his destiny. God didn’t change Abraham’s name, the name Abraham was not an afterthought for God, God always knew Abram as Abraham, even when Abraham didn’t know it, God gave him his new name at the appropriate time, at His own desired time. God had to prepare Abraham’s mind for his destiny. Each time Abraham heard his name, he heard the prophecy all over again, he saw in his mind’s eye the day he fell on his face before the Almighty God, the day God re-confirmed His covenant with him. It’s interesting that God chose to do this after Abram tried to help God by sleeping with his maid for a child (Sarai’s advice of course, see Genesis 16). You see if you don’t know who you are and what you were created for, the world will give you a name of its choice and assign another destiny to you. Sarai gave Abram an advice, her own take on things, she told Abram how she thought things would come to be and Abram weakened because he forgot who he was, he failed to tell his wife what God had shown him. He failed to let her know who he really was, he answered to the wrong name. God saw that Abram was giving up, it seemed he had forgotten who he was, and God wanted him to have a constant reminder of his destiny, so God called him exactly who he ought to be. This is God that calls things that are not as though they are and this is because they are, but we are just not aware of it. The seen is created from the unseen, there has to be the unseen (the spiritual) first, before the seen (physical), and this was a classic example.
The Lord said to Abram at the beginning of Genesis 17, ‘Walk before me and be perfect’. It was done, Abram was perfect in God’s eyes, Abram then, was not childless before God, he was the father of many nations, and the number of his children was like the number of the stars in the heavens. In chapter 15 of the book of Genesis, God gave Abram a mental picture, He took Abram out into the night and told him to look at the stars, and He compared it to the number of children Abram would have, innumerable! But by chapter 16, Abram was losing this mental picture (image), it wasn’t that clear in his mind anymore, so in chapter 17, God called him by his real name, Abraham – the father of many nations.
When anyone called the name Abraham, they would be prophesying and re-confirming destiny because life and death are in the power of the tongue (proverbs 18:21) and whenever Abraham heard his name and answered to it, he was agreeing with them (the person (s) who called him), as in Matthew 18:19, ‘Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven’. This way, God ensured that His will was done on earth as it was in heaven.
Let’s look at Simon Peter’s case in John 1:42, Jesus told Simon that he would be called Cephas, which means rock. This is what God saw Peter as, this was Peter’s destiny, to be the rock upon which God would build His church (Matthew 16:18). Jesus prepared Peter for this, by calling him the ‘rock’ everyday, till it came to pass.
My question to you now is, Do you know the real you? Do you know what name God calls you? Cause if you don’t, it’s time to find out and work with Him to fulfill your divine destiny. Go on; let His will be done in your life, as it is in heaven. Find out the real you today, your name matters...
(Written by Yewande Erinle © 2009 All rights reserved.)
