Day 3: The Name They Never Used
Day 3: The Name They Never Used
SCRIPTURE READING: Genesis 16:8-9, 13 (NIV)
"And he said, 'Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?'... She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: 'You are the God who sees me.'"
DEVOTIONAL REFLECTION
Sarai called her "my servant." Abram called her "your servant." For the entire story up to this point, nobody in Hagar's life had used her actual name. She was a role. A solution. A problem to be managed. A body that could do something for someone else.
Then the angel of the Lord speaks, and the very first word out of his mouth is: "Hagar."
Not a title. Not her usefulness. Her name.
That single word undoes something. The people who had power over her had spent years defining her by what she could do for them. God defines her by simply knowing her. There's a world of difference between being useful to someone and being known by them, and Hagar had likely never experienced the second one until this moment in the desert.
You have probably felt the difference too. Maybe you've been "the reliable one" at work for so long that nobody asks how you're actually doing. Maybe you've been "mom" or "dad" so completely that somewhere along the way you stopped being a person with your own name and needs. Maybe shame has renamed you after your worst decision, your diagnosis, your addiction, or the thing that was done to you - and that one chapter became the title of your whole story.
The world is fluent in that kind of naming. It names you by your usefulness, your failures, your worst season. But God knows your name beneath every label anyone else has put on you.
And here's what makes this even more staggering for us on this side of the cross: through Jesus, God doesn't just know your old name. He gives you a new one. The far away are called near. The ashamed are called forgiven. The orphaned are called sons and daughters. You are not stuck with whatever name your past gave you. God has already spoken a better one over you.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
God, thank you that you know my name and not just my role. Thank you that you are not managing me from a distance the way others have. Help me stop answering to the names shame has given me, and start living like the one you've spoken over me is actually true. I want to be known, not just useful. Amen.
TODAY'S PRACTICE
Say your own name out loud, quietly, followed by this sentence: "God knows me, not just what I do." Let it feel strange. Let it sink in anyway.
SCRIPTURE READING: Genesis 16:8-9, 13 (NIV)
"And he said, 'Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?'... She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: 'You are the God who sees me.'"
DEVOTIONAL REFLECTION
Sarai called her "my servant." Abram called her "your servant." For the entire story up to this point, nobody in Hagar's life had used her actual name. She was a role. A solution. A problem to be managed. A body that could do something for someone else.
Then the angel of the Lord speaks, and the very first word out of his mouth is: "Hagar."
Not a title. Not her usefulness. Her name.
That single word undoes something. The people who had power over her had spent years defining her by what she could do for them. God defines her by simply knowing her. There's a world of difference between being useful to someone and being known by them, and Hagar had likely never experienced the second one until this moment in the desert.
You have probably felt the difference too. Maybe you've been "the reliable one" at work for so long that nobody asks how you're actually doing. Maybe you've been "mom" or "dad" so completely that somewhere along the way you stopped being a person with your own name and needs. Maybe shame has renamed you after your worst decision, your diagnosis, your addiction, or the thing that was done to you - and that one chapter became the title of your whole story.
The world is fluent in that kind of naming. It names you by your usefulness, your failures, your worst season. But God knows your name beneath every label anyone else has put on you.
And here's what makes this even more staggering for us on this side of the cross: through Jesus, God doesn't just know your old name. He gives you a new one. The far away are called near. The ashamed are called forgiven. The orphaned are called sons and daughters. You are not stuck with whatever name your past gave you. God has already spoken a better one over you.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
- What label - fair or unfair - has come to define me more than my actual name?
- Who in my life only knows what I do for them, not who I actually am?
- What would it feel like to hear God say my name the way he said "Hagar" - not as a title, but as someone truly known?
- What new name has Jesus given me that I still haven't fully believed?
- Do I let shame keep renaming me after my worst moment, instead of letting God's grace rename me?
God, thank you that you know my name and not just my role. Thank you that you are not managing me from a distance the way others have. Help me stop answering to the names shame has given me, and start living like the one you've spoken over me is actually true. I want to be known, not just useful. Amen.
TODAY'S PRACTICE
Say your own name out loud, quietly, followed by this sentence: "God knows me, not just what I do." Let it feel strange. Let it sink in anyway.
Posted in Daily Devotional