God Called Him What He Was Not, While He Was Hiding

There was a name people gave him at fifteen, and by twenty-five he was using it himself.

It started as a joke, more or less. Somebody said it in a group, everyone laughed, and it stuck the way those things stick, which is to say completely and without anybody deciding. For a while it annoyed him. Then it stopped annoying him. Then, at some point he could not identify, he started saying it about himself first, before anybody else could, because saying it first takes the sting out.

He is grown now and it is still there. Not the word so much. The idea behind it. When he thinks about what he is going to do next, that idea is already in the room, sitting quietly, adjusting what he thinks is available to him.

He has never argued with it. That is the part he noticed recently. Somewhere back there he stopped disagreeing, and it has been running unopposed ever since.

God called him something that was not true yet

There is a man in Judges called Gideon, and the way God greets him should stop you.

Gideon is hiding. He is beating out wheat inside a winepress, which is the wrong place to do it, because he is trying not to be seen by the people who keep taking the harvest. He is a frightened man doing a job in a hole.

And this is the greeting:

And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him, and said unto him, The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour. (Judges 6:12, King James Version)

Mighty man of valor. Said to a man hiding in a hole.

Gideon does what anybody would do. He argues. And listen to what he argues with, because it is a verdict he is carrying about himself:

Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. (Judges 6:15)

The least in my father's house. He has a ranking. He knows where he sits in it. Somebody put him there, probably years ago, and he has not argued with it in a long time either.

And God does not debate the ranking. He does not tell him he is being hard on himself. He says:

Surely I will be with thee. (Judges 6:16)

What they decided about you is not what you are. Judges 6 has God naming a man by something that was not visible yet, and it is His Spirit who makes a word like that stick better than the one from the group.

He does it again, at a first meeting

Jesus does the same thing, and He does it before anybody has done anything to earn it.

Simon is brought to Him. They have never spoken. And the first sentence out of His mouth is a name change:

And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone. (John 1:42)

Nothing has happened yet. No walking on water, no confession at Caesarea Philippi, no denial and no restoration. All of that is still coming, including the parts that go badly.

He gets the name at the start.

And God had done the same thing centuries earlier. He changed a childless man's name to Abraham, which means father of many nations, while the man had no children at all:

Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. (Genesis 17:5)

Have I made thee. Past tense, before there was one single piece of evidence.

You have a name that was given before anybody got a vote. John 1 and Genesis 17 both show a name given ahead of the proof, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than your record who makes that something you can walk in.

What He actually says, as a list of facts

This next part is not encouragement and it is not meant to make you feel a certain way. It is a set of statements about what is true.

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. (1 Peter 2:9)

Chosen. Royal. Holy. Called out.

Peter is writing to ordinary people scattered across a few provinces, most of them with no standing at all, some of them slaves. He is not describing how they feel about themselves on a good day. He is telling them what they are.

And Paul:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. (Ephesians 2:10)

His workmanship. Something somebody made on purpose, to a design.

You are not being talked into a better opinion of yourself. 1 Peter 2 and Ephesians 2 are statements about what is the case rather than encouragement, and it is His Spirit who makes a fact about a man settle deeper than an opinion about him ever could.

He is not reading what other people read

There is one line that explains why God's verdict keeps coming out different from everybody else's.

Samuel is sent to find a king. He looks at the eldest son, who is tall and looks the part, and assumes it is him. And God says:

Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)

The people who handed you a verdict were reading the outside. That is not an insult to them; it is all anybody has access to.

He is not working from that information. He never was.

The people who ranked you were reading a different page. 1 Samuel 16 says so plainly, and it is the Holy Spirit who knows what is actually in there and is not startled by any of it.

The name nobody else gets to see

And then there is one of the strangest promises in the Bible, right at the end.

To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. (Revelation 2:17)

A name that nobody else knows. Not the group. Not the people who gave you the other one.

Whatever else that verse means, it means this at least: there is something He calls you that is not up for discussion by anybody, and it is not a version of the name you got at fifteen.

You are carrying a name on a white stone that no vote can reach. Revelation 2 is written down, and it is His Spirit who is at work in a person long before they know what it says.