There is power in a name - Part 2

We are dealing with the subject of Jabes, this mysterious character who appears fleetingly in the pages of Scripture but who has a high spiritual content and who reminds us of the power of the mouth, the power of prophecies, the power of visualizing positive and good things. that change our destiny many times.

In our last passage we talked about Jabes' mother perhaps without realizing it and most likely without her knowing what she was doing, by giving this name to Jabes which in the original Hebrew means "pain" right? and the reason why she gave him this name was because she went through a very critical, very painful, very sad birth, and she wanted to point out how that nature and condition of her son, that origin of her son calling him Jabes whose name in the original Hebrew it alluded to that element of pain.

So we see that by giving him that name he was like putting a weight on him and that is why this text points out that fact, because there are only two verses and one of those verses speaks of his mother putting that on him because it caused him pain.

So the next verse, verse 10, what it does is show us without telling us exactly what is happening, how Jabesh changes and addresses that name with which his life has been charged, through a Word, an expression of faith that He directs him to the Lord to change his destiny, and that is why I want to dwell a little more on that name that they give to Jabes.

We saw in the previous segment how God changed Abram's name to Abraham, we saw how Isaac changed the name that his wife Rachel had given to Benjamin, who wanted to call him Benoni and Isaac says: no, we are not going to call him Benoni.

Notice something that is important in this case: it is that Isaac, despite the fact that Raquel gave him that name when he was just dying, that it would have been respectful of him to keep that name although perhaps it was not very pleasant, but Isaac understood so clearly that that name was terrible because it meant sadness, son of my sadness, that he wanted to change almost the last will of his wife and gave it a totally opposite name, Benjamin, which means: the son of the one who sits at my right hand completely changing the implication of his name.

We also have Jacob. Jacob means "supplanter" which also refers to the origin of Jacob, he came out grabbing his brother Esau by the heel because he wanted to go out first, right? from his mother's womb, and they gave him the name as well as supplanter as one who wants to take the position of another, because he wanted to take the position of another, just as he wanted to take the position of the firstborn instinctively that belonged to Esau for having been the first of the two twins to be born.

So Jacob had been charged his whole life with that name and in fact it is exactly what he does with his brother because he cheats on his brother, cheats on his father and takes the birthright from Esau, his brother because he cheated on him, and that it was his temperament, that was his character, his name interestingly predisposed him to a type of spiritual behavior, and it is that names have great power.

Now, when Jacob grows up and has that very powerful experience when he is running away from Esau who wants to kill him because he deceived him, we see that Jacob fights with the angel, we see that scene, right? where Jacob fights with the angel because he wants the blessing, he wants the angel to bless him, and when morning is coming the angel what he does is that he dislodges his thigh, the battle ends, but in reality he defeated him in the sense of that the angel could not prevail over him by natural means, he had to resort to a supernatural means, but Jacob had the persistence that simply fighting hand to hand by natural means the angel could not defeat him but rather that Jacob tired him and finally had to go to a supernatural means to overcome him, and therefore, in a sense, it was Jacob who defeated the angel and God changed his name from malicious, manipulative, deceiving, supplanting Jacob, right? as it would be known from then on, already a name full of spiritual meaning.

Now he was a different person and also Jacob was going to be used as the channel of the lineage of Abraham, of his father Isaac, it was no longer Abraham - Isaac - Esau to whom the birthright belonged, but now it would be Abraham - Isaac - Jacob, but his spiritual name that God gave him was Israel from where the name would come after the nation of Israel.

But God knew that this manipulative name did not suit the progenitor of the entire nation and that is why he called him Israel. That is to say that all these names, Sara was also changed, from Sarai to Sara because she was going to be the mother because she was going to be a mother of multitudes also like her husband Abraham.

All of these things suggest that Scripture takes the importance of a name very seriously but more than a name many times it is the statement we make. We have to be careful what comes out of the mouth, the label we put on someone, the statements we sometimes make because the Christian has power in his mouth.

That is why it is important that children born in faith have names that are meaningful, that allude to spiritual values. Sometimes we take a name because "oh, such an artist" even Christians do that, "so and so, a novel that I saw and liked or a character in a book" and many times we do not understand the importance of names.

I have heard of girls named Jezebel or Dalilah. Well, if your name is Dalilah well amen, there is nothing to do, but there is also a spiritual burden that exists many times with those names and we have to be very careful with the name we give to our children.

We will have more time to discuss these things later. May the Lord bless you and until our next segment.