Your Real Name

If there’s one thing I am learning, it’s that we keep learning every day. Life is a journey of discovery, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that the best part of this discovery journey is that of self-realization. Why? Because as you get to know, understand, and most importantly – accept yourself (shortcomings and all) the way God sees you; only then you truly come into the place of real peace.

Today, I want to share with you something I learnt…. the greatest irony being that it is something that is really not ‘new’ to me per se, but which I count myself blessed to ‘know’ today in a deeper way, and something that I pray will minister to you also. This is one thing I love about growing especially as a Christian. You can never know it all, and sometimes even that which you think you know, you can come to realize with even greater clarity. This is why we never know God’s word enough, even if we were to memorize every single word in the Bible. There will always be fresh realization and revelation, and the same goes for our everyday lives as children of the living God. If we just plug in and anchor ourselves tightly in the Lord regardless… ours will be lives of constant refreshing.

But let me not get ahead of myself…. I believe this message is powerful because I believe it is something the Lord needs you to hear very clearly today. I pray He will open your mind to truly hear with the eyes and ears of your inner man, and to truly receive what the Spirit will speak through these words, in Jesus name. Amen!

So, you know I’m still on the Genesis journey right? Well today, I had one of those ‘revelation in what I have always known’ moments sis. Simply amazing…and amazing in its simplicity! 

Genesis 3 v 20 (AMP) catches my eye and I find myself doing a double-take. ‘The man called his wife’s name Eve (life spring), because she was the mother of all the living’. I have read this Scripture time and again over the years, but this morning I found myself wondering what it was doing in this particular place. I thought ‘Hadn't she been named Eve before?’ I mean, following creation, the entire story up to this point has been about Adam and Eve right? Well, as I asked these questions and more of myself, I flipped back to Genesis 2 v 20 and one verse at a time started to look for where mention was made of ‘Eve’ prior to Gen 3 v 20. I realized for the first time, that there was no mention of ‘Eve’ before this… The other party in the Genesis story up to this point was ‘Woman’ and on a couple of occasions ‘Wife’. I guess I had become so used to the story of ‘Adam & Eve in the garden of Eden’ that my mind framed the words I had read several times around this. But that is not the way the Bible reads… and there is a major message in this!

I asked the Lord to explain this to me because I was really perplexed for some reason. Go to the scripture and check for yourself. Gen 2 v 23: ‘…she shall be called woman…’; Gen 2 v 24: ‘…and cleave to his wife….’; Gen 2 v 25: ‘…the man and his wife…’; Gen 3 v 1: ‘…and satan said to the woman…’;and so it continues from Gen 3 v 2 right down to Gen 3 v 17. I saw that even in verse 16, God Himself spoke ‘To the woman’. He didn’t name her! As He spoke his rebuke, He spoke it ‘to the woman’. Again I asked, ‘Why Lord? What does all this mean?’

And the Spirit of the Lord spoke to me. Please hear and let this truth sink deep, sis.

The Lord said asked me to note that the woman was not named until AFTER she had sinned and was in her fallen state - naked and ashamed, hiding from the presence of the Lord. He asked me to pay attention to this fact. He reminded me that He had already given Adam the mandate in Gen 2 v 19 to name every living thing, and that whatever Adam called every living creature ‘that was its name’. He reminded me that ‘Adam’ the spirit man – male and female which He created, were His representatives on the earth, created in His image and likeness, and with His full authority to rule and reign on the earth. Then He said to me that all that happened when Adam called the woman ‘Eve’ was that Adam was following the principle of the identity that He (God) gives to His children, and calling the woman by her divine name and mandate. He said to me that He when He rebuked the woman, He was speaking to her sin nature, to her flesh; that He was not saying that this was who she was designed to be, or who she was.

The Lord showed me that we are given a definition of ‘Eve’ in Gen 3 v 20. Eve means ‘Life Spring’ – a beautiful name, a name filled with promise, purpose and potential. He asked me to think with my human senses for a minute and imagine what ‘flesh’ would have named the woman ordinarily. I mean, a woman who has sinned and also caused you to sin in such a major way? A woman who has brought a weight of hardship on generations of women (in childbearing) and men (in toil on a land that is now cursed)? A woman who has taken away your cover of the glory of God? A woman who has caused you to be cast out of Eden (the place of God’s delight) with its abundant provision and protection? And you know that as Adam, flesh would never allow you give cognizance to your own role in accepting to also eat of the fruit that was offered. Flesh would not remind you that you also were given the commandment – in fact, you were the primary custodian of the commandment not to touch the tree, or that you could easily also have said No! Flesh would never allow you to accept those thoughts. No, no ,no! Flesh would lay all the blame squarely on the woman and her guile, and what her 'evil' intentions might have been, etc etc. And through all these, if flesh was to have named the woman, she would then have been called some name which would translate to mean something like ‘Burden’ ‘Liability’ ‘Destroyer’ or worse. Maybe if flesh had named the woman, she would have been the first Bible character named ‘Mara’. Do you see where the Lord was taking me?

And again the Lord said to me… ‘Adam named her Eve…“Life Spring” because that is the name that I know her by. That is the name I called her to be from the foundations of the earth…and that is the name that she is!’ God said to me that He does not name us according to our sins, shortcoming and failings in life. No sis, He does not! If she had already been called Eve at creation, and if He had rebuked her as 'Eve', He would have been defining her spirit-being according to a sin nature which would not be in agreement with 'the image and likeness' of Himself. He said that despite the weight of her sin of disobedience, He already had a redemption plan and He already knew His victory over sin and the devil. Knowing this, He was not going to call His precious creation after things that had happened in the flesh, and especially not when He had already declared all of His creation – herself included, ‘Good’!

Sis, the word of the Lord for you today is that no matter the labels the world has put on you because of your sins – past, I dare say ‘present’, and certainly future; that is not the name the Lord calls you. Regardless of the names that you yourself have put on yourself as a result of secret sins, of things from your past or present which everyday hold you bound in fear of discovery and in condemnation; regardless of those names that people have called you because of what they (and perhaps you?) consider to be failings in your life – unmarried; divorced; single parent; raped; spoiled; broken; unfit; jobless; struggling financially; overweight; uneducated; one kind of failure or the other…. Regardless of all the above, that is NOT what God called you from the foundation of the earth, and that is NOT who you really are!

The Lord said to tell you today that He has looked past all of that, and today He names you afresh! He said to remind you that He formed you, and He called you ‘Good’. Can you please truly believe this? God said to remind you that He was intentional about bringing you into this world. He has specific reasons why He birthed you. He has specific reasons why He has allowed everything in your life to be. He says to remind you that you don’t have to understand it all… but you have to know that His word is TRUE and ALL things are working out for your good and for a far greater weight of glory than you could ever imagine! He said to remind you that you were born for ‘signs and wonders’ and the fact that you have grown into adulthood contending with one challenge or the other does not invalidate this divine assignment on your life. You are the fruit of a womb, and God say’s to remind you therefore that you are His reward… and that this is true regardless of whether your birth/foster mother/parents wanted you or not. Their mistakes do not invalidate the word of God in and over your life.

The Lord said to remind you that the enemy is a beguiler, a cheater, a deceiver…and his strategies are many and varied, and sometimes you have succumbed and you will succumb; but God assures you that He will never name you differently because of this. God says to remind you today that you are ‘EVE’ - a life spring. It is through you, your experiences and testimonies that life will come forth …both literally through your womb, and otherwise as you commit to being a blessing in the lives of others and helping them come to and remain anchored in the way of everlasting life in Christ. God said to tell you that you are a Life Spring as long as you remain focused on walking in His will and way, and allowing Him lead you into the fullness of His assignment for your life here on earth.

God says I should tell you today to shake off the labels, the many negative names. He said to tell you to shake off the names you have accepted to be called., to shake them off violently!. He says that until we release what flesh and the world and the devil call us, and embrace what ‘Adam’ has called us, it will be hard for us to truly enter the place of God’s rest and live a life of His supernatural peace and abundance here on the earth. God says to remember that He has called us ‘Good’; ‘Blessed to be a blessing’; ‘Ransomed’; ‘Forgiven’; ‘Renewed’; ‘Restored’; ‘Sanctified’; ‘Justified’; ‘Pleasing to Him’; ‘Righteous in Him’; ‘External excellence’s’; ‘Joy’s to generations’; ‘Favored’; ‘Loved’; ‘Worthy’; ‘Kings and Priests’; ‘Brethren of Christ’; ‘HIS OWN’. His own, sis! His own!

The Word of God is filled with these and so many more names that are His prophetic description of who you really are as His child. Today the Lord asks that you and I press deeper into Him and His Word, so that we can truly know that no matter the situations and circumstances of our lives, in Him we have a glorious name and that name is our heavenly mandate and our heavenly reality.

I don’t know about you, but this is such a blessing to me… because more than anything else, today I know again with deeper insight and clarity that my name… my real name…all my real names (Forgiven; Saved; Anointed; Qualified; Chosen; Loved) they all add up to this one ‘WINNER’! Halleluyah! The Lord will help you truly find and know you and your real name my friend, even as He is surely helping me.

Be blessed sis… for you surely are!

There’s always light

Yes, I’m still here sis. I know it’s been another long hiatus from this page, a full month actually, but yours truly is still right here with you. If you have followed my last few posts, two big things should have hit you – first is that life happens and sometimes our best laid plans aren’t able to play out the way we plan (of one mine being a plan to go back to blogging every week); and secondly, the fact that life happening regardless, we must be relentless in delivering on our mandates – and so regardless of how many weeks it takes me to deal with ‘life’ as it happens, I will keep coming back. I will be relentless in fulfilling my assignment to grow with you on this very same journey of life.

I so wish I could share with you some of the many interesting things I have been dealing with over the past month, but that would be a book and not a blog post, lol. Besides, that is not the word I have for you today. And I have to be obedient to share what the Lord has shown me this morning right?

So, a couple of days ago, the Lord asked me to go back to study of the book of Genesis. Genesis? I asked because He had given me this same assignment very early this year, and from the things He showed me then, He had also given me a title for a book I am to write. Life has happened to me enough so that I actually haven’t made much progress with this assignment, but I have shared the book title with my precious sista, Editor and Publisher Bidemi Mark-Mordi (www.verbatimcommunications.com) and I had started to record my first notes a few months back. There was a time when I would have patted myself on the back for at least making a move, but hey… that was too many months ago to still be basking in that particular glow.  That said, God obviously still has His way of using our procrastination's and failings to birth the things that He has purposed and He continues to make this clear to me in my life, as I pray He does in yours.

As I got the Word to go back to Genesis once again, I will confess I went through one of those ‘Lord, is this really you?’ type moments. But you know girl, I could almost see our Father shake His head at me in mock exasperation, saying ‘You know My voice, Audrey. Get to it’. So, I obeyed and I am so glad I did because He is showing me new things, and they are revelations that are such a word in due season for me, as I pray those I am led to share on this forum will be to you too (and as I pray the book will be to every reader eventually).

Sometimes we read Scripture and we miss things that have been readily evident to many others for so long. Today for instance, I saw for the first time, that the very same principle on which God called forth vegetation to reproduce from the seed that He had already put within them, and according to their own kind and in their own likeness(Gen 1 v 11-12); is actually the very same principle by which He created man. Simply put… God, in speaking the creation of man into being, was in essence calling for the seed that was already in Him (our Spirit man) to come forth out of Him, in His image and according to His likeness. Somehow, I had never really seen this and I truly can’t recall anyone having made the connection for me before.  Many things were laid on my heart as this simple connection was made, but suffice to say that for today, my only assignment to you from this is to lay a foundation by reminding you that our God is a God of Principle! And…. if you and I would submit to His principles, we will live much more purposeful and fulfilled lives here on earth.

As I got to verse 13 of Genesis 1, I found myself asking a question I had never thought to ask before. ‘Why didn’t God simply make everything in one day?’ I mean really sis, why? It’s not that He wasn’t able to. Indeed, our God could have created everything He created in those 6 days in a single day or even in a moment. I pondered on this a bit and the Spirit of God said to me that it is because our God is a Master Builder; an excellent craftsman; because in building with excellence, everything has its own time, purpose and season; because process is critical to building, and because ‘Process’ is a key principle in God’s Kingdom.

Sis, the Lord reminded me that there is actually a fullness to be experienced in every phase of the building process...if we would only open our eyes to see it! At the end of every ‘Let there be…and there was’ period of creation, God looked at what He had done, approved of it and then basked in its goodness for that day. He knew (because He knows all things) that He was not done yet, that there was not yet a completion. But He didn’t sit around fretting about what was as yet not done. No! Rather He stayed, He remained, and He basked in the goodness of that day. When the time came, He then spoke to the new season, birthed something new, and again repeated the cycle.  So what does this mean? Sis, you and I need to realize that our lives are not over yet, so we need to learn to rest in each season. There is a reason greater than you and I could ever really and truly know for the methodology and order in which God does His own things. But there are some principles (that word again) that make clear that He is in every minute detail of every creation process – including the birthing of every single day, phase or season of our lives.

I found myself looking more deeply than ever before at the methodology of creation and seeing for the first time that there were principles that guided what God created in which order. Again, very simple things that perhaps some great scholars have written and taught for years, but my eyes were just opened to this, and there must be a reason. I saw for the first time for instance, that God created the land and the seas first because quite obviously (I can say that now) vegetation needs to be anchored to the ground and feed on nutrients from within the soil, and it also needs to be watered so that it stays fresh, survives and flourishes. Speaking of principles, does this kind of remind you about how we only find that sense of true joy and completeness when we are firmly anchored in and on the Lord who is our Firm Foundation, and how the Spirit of God in us waters and refreshes our souls so that we can really and truly live and flourish? Principle, sis! Principle!

The Lord re-established to me that there are things He first brings into our lives because they are the very things that will nourish us and build our muscles for the next levels in our lives. Each of us must go through a ‘morning and an evening’ in order to reach the fulfillment of the ‘day’. It is the phases we are in that are the foundation to help us stand when God adds the next floor on the building that is our lives. And no sis, it does not follow that where we are at any one point in our lives will always be good. One of the things God showed me last week was that when He created light and ‘saw that it was good’ (Gen 1 v 4), He didn’t destroy darkness. And He could have, couldn’t He? He could have said ‘Light is really great, let there be no darkness’ and that is exactly what would have happened and you and I would know no better today. But He rather allowed the darkness to continue to exist alongside the light. What this spoke to me is that in the grand scheme of it, God is light… and that He allowed darkness to coexist with light because darkness has a purpose that He alone sees and understands.

I was pondering on this when suddenly my attention was caught by two Scriptures that lay practically side-by-side on the same page in my Bible (Gen 1 v 4 and Gen 1 v 14). God had already clearly separated light and darkness into Day and Night (v4-5), so why did He still go ahead and create the ‘lights in the heavens’ to still further separate the day from night? Wouldn’t mankind have known the difference between day and night simply because one was light and the other was darkness? Later on in that verse it speaks to God having done this to provide us with signs and tokens of His care and provision, as well as to mark seasons, days and years. But something else was spoken to my heart. Sis, the word of God to you today is that this further creation of lights and evident signs of separation of day and night, is a type and shadow of the fact that only God sees the big picture of your life and He has sorted you out completely. Only God sees through and understands darkness and light at the same time, sis. He wasn’t referring to day and night in that context, He was referring to the seasons you and I have gone and will go through as He builds our life into that beautiful image He has of us in the end. This passage wasn’t about the physical day or night sis. After all, when we are in our seasons of trial, the challenges are with us day and night for days, weeks or months on end. No, it’s so much more than that!

His word to you today is that He will never fail to give you a token or a sign that will help you know that – no matter the weight of the day you are in, He is with you; He loves you; and He will hold your hand and walk you through till you see the light that is actually already there. And there is light sis! There is! This word is to help you see this, sis. God knew that if He simply left things at the first separation in Gen 1 v4, our inner man would give up very readily on the measure of faith He has already put in us through the Holy Spirit. We would give up because our physical eyes might not be able to see anything in our current circumstances to validate that faith, and the level of doubts and fears we would then allow in the physical would completely becloud that inner light. Knowing this, our God Who loves us beyond measure constantly puts testimonies (signs and tokens) in our lives just so we know. Just so we know sis, that the Master Builder has not given up on us; that hard as it might be, this season is for a reason; that we are being built up and perfected in our seasons of darkness; and that light surely will comes…for our God is light… in every situation. He is the light that is our victory! He is the light that dispels every darkness around us! He is the light that illuminates us, making us shine brighter and brighter, until the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

There is just one proviso though, sis….and this is that we have to keep looking up to Him alone! In Gen 1 v 16-17, God created the two great lights and set them in the expanse of the heavens. Why? Why couldn’t He have made it such that light would emanate from the dust of the ground or the leaves of trees at night? Or why did He not set the sun, moon and starts to shine from deep within the core of the earth? If He had done that it wouldn’t have been strange to us because that is all we would ever have known to be normal. But it’s about principle once again sis. God set the lights in the heavens because He is our Father in heaven and because He is light! He set them up there because He wants us to always look up to the light (to Him), regardless of whether it is day or night! God wants us to look up to Him so that we learn to rest in whatever season we are in, knowing that the One Who is light Himself is very much in control; that He is building us up for greater testimonies ahead.  

Sis, I see this as a secret to a successful, contented, spirit-led life that will bless us and glorify God. Do you see what I see? I don’t know what your ‘day’ or ‘night’ looks like now, my sister and friend. I truly have no idea what season you are in. But, God wants you to know today that there is always light! He is always your light and He will take you into His rest now if you let Him. Don’t look at what is not working, sis. Don’t let the enemy shift your focus! Any way you cut it, if you would literally ‘count your blessings’, you will not be able to deny God’s faithfulness in your life; you will not be able to deny that the Light has shined for you in both your day and night, year in and year out. He is the same God today as always, sis. Trust Him! Lean on Him! Allow Him help you through the difficulty of this season, as you look up to Him and trust that all things are working out for your good. The Lord will help you sis, even as He is surely helping me!

Be blessed….. for you surely are!