That I may Know HIM - A Devotional

Day 40: PASHUR: The Mystery of Hidden Names

There is a change of name frequently taking place in the spirit realms.  Has your name been changed already?  To what?

c) Gideon

Gideon was a frightened young man who lamented the backslidings of his nation and bemoaned also the good old days when God used to be with them. When the angel of God addressed this apparently cowardly man, he was called a “mighty man of valour” (KJV); a “valiant warrior” (New American Standard);a “mighty warrior” (NIV) (Judges 6:12).  Gideon was surprised. He could not believe that he had such a name in the realms of the spirit.  He had been calling himself by all the terrible names of failure and defeat. The radical and rather mysterious turn-around of the circumstances of Gideon’s life from a fearing defeatist personality to a conquering mighty warrior began from that angelic announcement of his new name in the spirit.

d) Elizabeth    

When Angel Gabriel spoke with Mary about her immaculate conception, he also notified her about the conception of her aged cousin Elizabeth, “who was called barren” (Luke 1:36).

Who “called” Elizabeth “Barren”? Everybody knew her to be “Aunty Lizzy.”  Her certificates all bore “Elizabeth.”  Her ID card carried the same name.  Nobody had been so callous as to call her by the reproachful name of her aged childless condition. Only the angel could have known that, besides her natural name of “Elizabeth,” there was another name by which she was also being called, a name of which men knew nothing, not even Elizabeth’s husband who was a priest.  Elizabeth’s miraculous change of status from “Barren” to “Mother,” from “Reproach” to “Praise,” all began from the encounter with that angel that revealed that she used to be called (we are not told by whom or in what register) by a reproachful, limiting name.

As unto Jacob and Gideon and Elizabeth, may God send His messengers to reveal the hidden names that should be changed, and to announce the new names that should usher you into your new status of glory.  Amen.

e) Change of Fortunes 

Sometimes the change of fortune has been tied to the change of natural names, as with Abraham, Sarah, and Israel who used to be called Jacob (Genesis 17: 1-8, 15-16; 32:28-34). But sometimes it has also been tied to the change of a hidden spiritual name, as with Pashur, Pharaoh, Gideon and Elizabeth. 

Do you know the name by which God and angels call you? Do you know the names by which devils and wicked persons call you?  And what names do you call yourself?

2. The Power of  the Name in the Spirit

Pashur was a deputy high priest; the No.2 citizen, as far as the affairs of God were concerned in that religious society.  He was such a powerful man that he could at will imprison and release a man as respected as the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:1-3).  His arrogance and wickedness earned him a change of name in the spirit realm, and that name was to order his life thenceforth in specific ways, as the prophet enumerated.

Pashur was going to see Terror everyday of his life everywhere he went.  He would freeze in an oven and burn in the snow.  With guards all around him, he would scream in terror about assassins that only he would see.  If his car should break down on the highway, he would be too frightened to get out, yet too frightened, still, of the approaching darkness of night. The same food on which others grew fat would make him lean.  The same water that refreshed others would choke him.  In as safe and comfortable a place as his palace in the Temple, he would suffocate with the Terror that would have surrounded him “on every side.”

Besides the invasion of Terror, there would also be terrifying close-shaves with Danger, and actual visitations of Disaster. He would begin to see his secured friends die violently one after the other, fearing that it could soon be his turn. “With your own eyes you will see them fall by the sword of their enemies” (v.4).