What's in a name?

First Chronicles 4 tells us a litttle bit about Jabez.

"Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name, Jabez, saying, "Because I bore him in pain."

Jabez loved God and his mother and didn't want to cause pain to either of them or anyone else for that matter.

Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, "Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!"

He asked God to deliver him from the very meaning of his name!

It is true that wounded people wound others.

We try to give them understanding.
"They've had a rough life. No wonder they are acting like that."
(It helps to ease our own suffering from what they've done,
and besides, we, too, want understanding when we behave not so wisely.)


We hesitate to call their failings 'sin' or 'evil.'
We want to call it brokenness.

And sometimes we are broken and have not sinned.
But sometimes brokenness unhealed can lead to sin.

Jesus came to heal the broken-hearted.
Jesus came to cleanse us of our sin.
He 'fixes' us. Either way. In all ways.

Jabez would have been a likely candidate to get involved with evil and cause pain.
He would have had numerous reminders every day that he was a real pain in the you-know-what.

But he wanted to rise above the obvious result
of the cause and effect equation of his life.

And he did this by crying out to God.

Jabez asked God to keep him from evil within him and all around him so he wouldn't cause pain to others.
He also asked God to bless him and enlarge his territory-his property-his area of influence.
He asked that God's hand would be with him.

'Redeem me from my name.
And bless me too.'

You and I are not victims of our circumstances.
I mean, in actuality, we can be,
but we don't need to live up to our names or
our difficult circumstances
or our negative upbringing.

We are of God, Little Children.
And we have overcome the world
and its evil and its natural consequences of pain!

We are not of our names or of our past.

We. Are. Of. God.

And God is powerful and mighty.
He is kind and compassionate.
He is faithful and true.

And we are of Him.
Holy, Holy, Holy God.

While browsing on face book the other day,
I noticed that a blessed mother had posted a picture
of her son taken in a church-like setting.
He stood behind a microphone and she wrote something like,
'This is my son, ministering the Father heart of God.'

And I read it and wept, just as I am weeping now.

For this son of hers has struggled with the loss of his father
through no fault of his own.
His father abandoned the family when he was young
and he longed for his father
but there was no having him.

His name,(I'll call him 'Jeb'), took on the meaning,
"abandoned by my father."

But, then, there was God.
And in his pain, Jeb called out to Him.
For if our mother and/or father forsake us,
then the Lord will pick us up. (Ps. 27:10)
And that's what God did because that's what God does.
He, too, lives up to His name.
For He is called a Father to the fatherless.

God changed Jeb's name to mean "Beloved of God my Father."

And now, Jeb is out there,
revealing through his life and words
the great love of God His Father.

Oh Beloved.
Sometimes, God changes our names,
and thus changes the meaning of our names.
Like when He changed Abram's name to Abraham
and Jacob's name to Israel.


But sometimes, we keep our names
and He uses the meaning of our names
to bring about a longing for change,
and then, like Jabez, we cry out to Him.

Sometimes, we make a name for ourselves that
symbolizes the pain we have experienced or caused others.
But even that name can be changed through God's redemption
and blessing.

"And so God granted Jabez what he had requested."
(1 Chron. 4:10b)