Kary Oberbrunner was our guest blogger last night on the site – if you did not see the video i would urge you to do so…This post is not in reply to the post or in any part represents the book he has forthcoming, but it did raise some thoughts in my own mind that i would like to share.

Pet names. Given names. Every name we have, from the one chosen for us by our parents to the ones we collect over our lives from friends, loved ones and partners, play a part in shaping our self-identity. It’s true that we grown and live into the names by which we’re called.

Wait! I almost forgot. That was close!

Before you read any further take a minute and go outside and find two stones. Humor me will you? The size and shape don’t matter. Just try and find one stone that’s as close to white as possible and another stone that’s a darker shade. When you bring them back inside place the white stone near you on the table and hold the other in your hand as you continue reading. Okay.

The stone you’re holding represents other names that might have stuck with you over your life and gone into shaping your self-identity whether you wanted them to or not. We once chanted on the playground,“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” but even while chanting it with a firm upper lip I knew it wasn’t true. Name-calling hurt. They were like stones that smashed our spirits and vied for power in making us who we believed we really were. Every stone that the crowd readied in their hands to hurl at the adulterous woman was named. Tramp. Whore. Prostitute. Sinner. Had Jesus not intervened those stones could have crushed the life out of her. Such is the power of naming stones.

Have you ever been called a name that determined your identity? Did you hear Ugly when you were told “You’d be so pretty if you only lost some weight?” Have you always thought you were Stupid because you never seemed able to bring home grades that met you or your parents expectations? Did a lover betray you and leave you feeling Unlovable? Are you a Loser because you didn’t get the job you wanted or an Outsider because you weren’t included in the popular crowd? Have you always thought of yourself as Dirty because you were abused sexually as a child? How do you answer the question “Who am I?” How do you answer that question really, in the depths of your heart? Do your naming stones, and some of us have a pile of them, affect your answer? Whatever names you’ve been carrying within yourself all these years, write them on the stone you hold in your hand, and when you’re done, place that stone down and replace it with the white stone.

Scripture reveals our true identity. We are the people of God. We are God’s workmanship. We are sons and daughters of the most high God. We are the sheep and God is the shepherd. We are a holy people, a royal priesthood. We are the beloved. We are the beloved. We are the beloved but often our true identity is hidden under a pile of naming stones.

But there is another stone that’s born out of the intimacy of our relationship with God that reveals a secret name your beloved has given to you alone; a name better than Honey or Baby or even Cuppycake. In Revelation 2:17 it reads that to all those who have overcome, God will “give a white stone and on the stone a new name written, which no one will know except the one who receives it.” Is it so hard to imagine, such a far stretch to consider that God, your heavenly parent and your beloved has a special name for you; a name so sweet, intimate, and tender that it is only for you and God to know?

The theologian George MacDonald wrote more than a hundred years ago of the stone mentioned in the Book of Revelations; the one represented by the stone you now hold in your hand. Taking liberty with MacDonald’s gender language he wrote,
“It is the woman’s own symbol – her soul’s picture, in a word – the sign which belongs to her and to no one else. Who can give a woman this, her own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the woman is…It is only when the woman has become her name that God gives her the stone with the Name upon it, for then first can she understand what her name signifies…Such a name cannot be given until the woman is the name…that being whom He had in His thought when He began to make the child, and whom He kept in His thought through the long process of creations that went to realize the idea. To tell the name is to seal the success – to say “In thee also am I well pleased.”

God has a name for you, written on stone and even today you are becoming the name that God has held for you from the beginning of time. The naming stones are wrong. They aren’t your identity. Your most true identity can’t be given to you by parents, bosses, enemies, or even friends and lovers. Your identity is shaped and formed and flows from the very heart of God who loves you. Do you see that naming stone laying on the table near you. Give it up. Toss it away. Throw it in a river. Fling it over a mountain cliff. Whatever you do, get rid of it because it doesn’t belong to you anymore. It never did. Replace that naming stone that never really named you with God’s white stone. And why is the stone white? In ancient times a person was declared innocent by a jury if they presented the defendant with small white stones. While others find you guilty God declares you innocent and not only innocent but cherished by the bestowing of a unique and private name. Live in that name! Wake up each morning, take that white stone in your hand and ask that God would help you to grow into your name through the day. Though you don’t yet know what that still hidden secret name is by which you’re called, you can be assured that when you hear it you’ll smile because it will be a perfect fit.

I’m Not saying to abandon the identity that’s being shaped by life, but to let go of the junk that some of those experiences have left us with that hold us down in some way, that cause us to walk in shame or prevents us from moving forward in freedom and wholeness. Those are the things that never belonged to us and how do we know what they are? Because they are the very things that run counter to our identity in God. Does that make sense?

Our faith is one big mystery and if we ever forget that then we’re living like we’ve got it all figured out and if we have it all figured out then it ceases being faith at all. Mystery is good….even when it gnaws at you a little, don’t you think?