Names.

What is your name? Do you know what it means? Have you ever looked it up? Did you ever have one of those little bookmarks that had your name on it with the meaning on top of a field of flowers?

Maybe that was just me.

Towards the latter end of high school, Erin and I had a conversation about our names. I can’t remember the exact context, but I think we heard a sermon or had a conversation with someone about how our truest form of ourselves will be our new bodies in heaven. Somehow it also came up that God has a new name for us.

Israel is told in Isaiah 62 that she “will be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will bestow.”

In Revelation, the angel tells the church in Pergamum, “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”

Daniel and his buds got new names by Belteshazzar (okay they were opposite of the names God gave them, but name changes are really important in the Bible!).

In all this, I remember thinking, “sweet! I really don’t like my name! It’s at least a generation ahead of mine, and it would be awesome if God gave me a new one.”

So I set about asking God for a new one. Erin did too. I prayed about it when I thought about it and asked God for it to come up in my mind as a flashing neon sign that would be my new, cool name. I prayed for a week. It never happened.

In college, I remembered our conversation and would casually bring it up to God and remind Him that I still didn’t have a new name yet. Maybe every six months or so.

Erin called me one day out of the blue and told me that among some other things, God had revealed her new name to her. She didn’t tell me what it was, just that she was excited because it was such an intimate thing. I was happy for her. But I got annoyed. It’s been at least three years, God. What the heck? When does my cool name get to be given to me? [I’d like to say at this point I didn’t know whether or not this was going to happen. I wasn’t even sure if it was necessarily biblical or right or whatever, I just thought it would be cool.]

I graduated college and forgot about it.

Then, a couple nights ago, we showed Rob Bell’s “Name” Nooma film to the college group. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. In it, people take off layers and layers of colored t-shirts with descriptions on the back of them. Names like artist. condo. HIV+. addict. listener.

Rob Bell asks, “Who are you? Who are you …really? How do you see yourself? How do you project who you are to others?” Good stuff to think about.

Out of nowhere, clear as day in my head I heard,

“Remember how you wanted a new name? Your name is the one you have. Do you know what it means? Be confident in that name, for it is true.”

What the...?!

Karen means “pure”. And my middle name is Grace.

Pure is never something I’ve never thought synonymous with myself. Much of my struggles come from lust, self-gratification and selfish desires. Guilt has riddled my life. ‘Purity’ was a dirty word, but it never seemed possible.

And Grace? Ha. I’ve been fighting God for months, no, years on how I feel about grace. (I know it doesn't matter how I feel, I just have an incredibly hard time accepting it.) Only now have I begun to scratch the surface that it’s not how I feel about it, but the meaty, honest-to-God truth of the matter. Grace is unadulterated and free and there is an unlimited supply. Mix that with squeaky-clean purity and you get one confused girl who doesn’t know herself, but knows she should feel comfortable in the skin she’s in. But she’s not.

Until Sunday night.

It’s like Jesus said, “My gift to you IS pure grace…yet you can’t bring yourself to accept it. You can’t bring yourself to accept yourself.”

Whoa.

I don’t know where you’re at with purity. With grace. With yourself.

But be encouraged that you’re not alone in figuring out where you are with God. It probably changes every day. It does for me.

However, I do know that I’m loved. That I’m accepted. That I’m new and pure. My heart just is just ten times slower on the upkeep than my head.

Yours probably is too.

So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! [Paul’s letter to the Corinthians]

I won't be asking anymore for a new name.