| For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ.
And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God.
II Corinthians 1:20 |
Fellow Believers,Have you ever wondered why God bothered to change the names of certain individuals?
In Genesis 17:5, for instance, He told Abram, "No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations." The word Abraham means "father of a multitude".
God also changed the name of Sarai to Sarah (v. 15), which means "princess". A princess is, of course, a child of the king.
And in Genesis 32, God changed the name of Jacob to Israel, which means "ruling with God".
Of King Solomon, we read in II Samuel 12:24,25: "The Lord loved him; and because the Lord loved him, he sent word through Nathan the prophet to name him Jedidiah." Jedidiah means "beloved of Jah (or Jehovah)". (Incidentally, this passage indicates that Solomon was definitely a child of God.)
Taking these and other name changes in the Bible together, we can see that to God, a name is more than just a word that is used to identify a person. Rather, it is meant to reflect the spiritual state of that particular individual.
Hence, God promises to give every believer a new name "known only to him who receives it" (Rev. 2:17). Once we become saved, only we ourselves know that we have entered the Kingdom of God; the unsaved cannot even understand it.
By the same token, when God talks about His name, He is talking about His spiritual statewhich, of course, is the sum total of all His eternal attributes, including His supreme mercy and love, His holiness and justice, and all His other virtues at their zenith.
That's why Jesus could promise unequivocally, "You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it" (John 14:14) and "Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete" (16:24).
So, it's not really scriptural to say that God answers our prayers with "Yes", "No", or "later", as we are often told. Rather, our prayers are not always answered positively because our requests are not really in accord with the majestic Name of Jesus.
Third Quarter, 1991