In a famous and often overused passage, William Shakespeare once questioned the value of names. Essentially asking: is there any significance at all in what an object or person is called or is there more to identity than a simple title?  After all, coffee, if called by another name, would still taste just as good and still provide me with what I need in the morning to get my brain working. Does being Ben Bartosik hold any importance to who I am at my core or am I more than what my parents chose to call me at birth? I recognize that in our cultural context names are often nothing more than a reflection of the trends of a particular decade or occasionally an homage to a loved one or icon; which is why I believe we need to look cross culturally in order to further consider this question. What’s in a name?

This idea was sparked while I was reading through Ephesians 3 this morning. Paul writes, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family on earth is named…” Then he goes into this amazing section on the power of the Spirit in understanding the love of Christ and the fullness of God and just breezes right on by those first two verses which become understandably overlooked against the rest of the passage. So that’s where I backed up and got hung on this naming stuff.

In the Hebrew culture a name meant something. It said something about you. [Isaac - "he laughs", Noah - "rest/comfort", Benoni -"son of my sorrow."] Your name was not just something that sounded nice to your parents, it was directly related to who you were. Often it was representative of where you came from. Other times it was something to be earned; to live up to the name your parents gave you. Whatever the case, there is something very important we can understand.

To be named is to be be given an identity.

So what does it mean when Paul writes that we have been named by God? To be named by our heavenly Father?

We find a really amazing picture of someone being (re)named by God in Genesis 32. Jacob is out in the wilderness fleeing his past and hiding from his brother when he has an interesting encounter with God. It says that during the night he was alone and “a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.” This man is unable to defeat Jacob and asks to be released but Jacob replies, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” The stranger asks Jacob for his name (who he is) and then says something that changes Jacob’s entire identity.

“Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Through this encounter Jacob finds a whole new life. He is given a whole new identity. He is changed. He is remade. He is restored. He goes from being called Jacob ["Heel-Catcher" or "cheater"] to being named Israel ["He strives with God"]. And this name is given to him by the very God he struggled with and demanded a blessing from.

I can’t help but enjoy the significance of that. Through struggling with the divine, his father’s God becomes his God and he finds a whole new life in the process.

To be named by God is to be given a whole new identity. It is to be remade into a new person. It is to come face to face with the creator and walk away changed.

So then what is this name that Paul is referring to that God has given all of us?
I think the answer is found in the wording. “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family on earth is named…” God has named us his children. He has named us his heirs. This is who we are. This is where we find our significance and where we find our calling. In being named God’s child we are named his own. This is intimate and personal and life changing kind of stuff. And it means something that should change the entire way we view ourselves.

To be a child of God is to be loved by God.

“Faith comes out of awe, out of an awareness that we are exposed to his presence, out of anxiety to answer the challenge of God, out of an awareness of our being called upon.“ (Heschel)

Learning to see the world in terms of the divine is not easy. Our minds are preoccupied with every distraction and we have been taught to be skeptical in all areas of faith. From childhood we have learned how to answer questions and solve problems rather than bask in the tension that comes from wonder. In doing so we have shut our eyes to the divine mysteries all around us. If we are ever to encounter God, we must begin by recognizing where He is trying to get our attention.

It is out of the miracle that God calls to us.

When Moses drew near to the burning bush in Exodus 3, God called out to him by name, “Moses. Moses!” In this moment the divine act became personal. The sunset hangs in the sky as though it was painted just for you. The rain falls and refreshes you exactly when you need it the most. The gentle breeze comes and fills you with a sense of peace in the midst of a troubled time. The stars strike you with a reminder that God is there listening to your prayers. This is faith; the sense that God is present and calling out to you by name. It’s personal. It’s familiar.

“Moses, Moses!”

This is the call from a God who knows you. It’s a call that invites you to come face to face with the depths of his love that he has just for you. It’s the experience of the bride being called upon by her beloved. “I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking. ‘Open to me!‘” (Song of Songs 5:2) This is the terrifying language of love. As we seek the divine and are drawn towards him through wonder and awe we realize something truly unbelievable. This God is actually calling out to us. This God is seeking us.

This is a God who is pursuing you.

The call of God is an invitation to encounter his presence. It’s an invitation to commune with the creator of the universe who welcomes you as a loved one. It’s an invitation to experience the unending love of God.

Lesson 2: But You Have To Respond.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Rev. 3:20)  We can’t encounter the presence of God if we don’t answer his call to let him in. We have to respond. The scary thing is that this isn’t just surface level belief that we are being invited to. This is the life changing, unrelenting, soul-exposing depths of the  passionate love of God that we are being called to experience.

The lover of our soul is desperately crying out to us for union. “Open to Me!” Inviting us deeper and further into a relationship with this God who says that we have “captivated [his] heart.” (Song of Songs 4:9)

The question now is whether or not you are willing to surrender to his invitation.

“Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?” (Is. 40:26)

What does it mean to encounter God? What does it look like? Feel like? How will I know when it happens? I confess I still struggle with these questions even this many years into my spiritual journey. We all go through times of spiritual dryness. Times when, like the Psalmist we can say, “my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” (Ps 63) So often we desperately need an encounter with the living God because everything else is failing to quench our thirst. It’s often in these desert experiences that we find ourselves humble enough to cry out to the one who we really need.

The experience of Moses in Exodus 3 is one of the best pictures of what it is for the human soul to encounter the divine. The story begins with Moses in Midian. Having fled from his past and seeking safety; he’s now in exile, running from his failures, his sins, and the conviction that his own people are in slavery in Egypt. He’s hiding out in this foreign land and it says that “he sat down by a well.” (Ex 2:15). Sitting by a well. This is a beautiful picture of settling, resting, getting comfortable. It’s here that he finds a wife, raises a family, and gets a job for the next 40 years. And what seems like a perfect ending to a story is actually just the beginning. There is actually a grander narrative taking place.

God is at work to rescue his people.

When Moses encounters God in Exodus 3 we find him tending to a flock of sheep in the wilderness. Presumably this is something that he does often; yet this is important. Moses meets God in a seemingly insignificant, ordinary place. He’s at his day job in the middle of the wilderness and “the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a burning bush.” (3:2) Moses witnesses a divine act, a miracle, but God doesn’t speak until Moses pays attention.

Lesson 1: Open Your Eyes

Moses was able to see the divine act because he had his eyes open. He saw the miracle taking place in the ordinary and named it for what it was. “He looked, and behold, the bush was not consumed, And Moses said, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight.’” (3:2-3) I am convinced that God is at work doing miracles all around us each day. We are simply failing to notice them as divine acts. We need to open up our spiritual eyes in order to see them for what they are. Abraham Heschel writes,

This, indeed, is the greatness of man: to be able to have faith. For faith is an act of freedom, of independence of our own limited faculties, whether of reason or sense-perception. It is an act of spiritual ecstasy, of rising above our own wisdom… to think in the world in the terms of God. To have faith is not to defy human reason but rather to share divine wisdom.

An encounter with God begins first with an awareness of the divine acts in the ordinary, unexpected places of life. Choosing to wonder in the midst of the miracles of creation and being drawn in by awe and faith is the first step. God is at work all around us. There is this grander narrative taking place and He’s always trying to get our attention and bring us into it.

We just need to open our eyes and see.

“The expression of faith is an affirmation of truth, a definite judgement, a conviction, while faith itself is an event, something that happens rather than something that is stored away; it is a moment in which the soul of man communes with the glory of God.” (Heschel)

I was wrestling my way through Romans 1 the other day and got hung up on the notion that “the righteous shall live by faith.” (v 17) Righteousness [gr. - dikaiosune] means our right standing with God, or our  justification. Faith [gr. - pistis]  is our conviction or assurance that we have been saved by God. What interested me is the idea that our right standing with God is found through our ongoing conviction that we are saved through grace.

The gospel, that Paul writes about previously to this, reveals “the righteousness of God from faith for faith.” We understand the gospel. The good news that we have been saved through Christ alone. We accept this salvation in an act of faith. However, what stands out is that our continued righteousness is found through this same faith.

The faith that saves us also justifies us.

If we are to be righteous, to be in right standing with a holy God, we must live by faith. We must live, each day, in an awareness of our salvation. To live a life of faith is to live a life of daily humility and surrender. To offer ourselves before a God who saves us from ourselves. It’s not obedience that makes us holy, it’s faith. Our obedience is merely a reflection of our daily surrender.

This is why remembering is so necessary to a life of faith. It is through our memories that we are able to relive our need for salvation each day. We recall what it is to need to be rescued and through that we find humility. Then as we surrender ourselves to our rescuer we discover the joy of our salvation all over again. If we are to return to God we must remember what he’s done for us. Our memories serve as our witness and testimony to the gospel of grace in our lives. That we have been saved through the unrelenting love of a holy God who gave himself to make right standing between us and him, and that this is something we can live in perpetual and daily awareness of and participation in. Perhaps this is why our Lord tells us to “pick up our cross daily“; because a life of faith is a daily return to the salvation given freely through the death and resurrection of Jesus.