On Sunday evening, after a morning service where I preached on the name of God (YHWH) among other things, a certain lady sent me this message:
This morning when I woke up I immediately went into worship. After a little while I felt that my words were inadequate, more specifically the words I was using to describe who God is to me. So a thought came to me: "What other fitting names can I use to address/describe God?" I wanted my worship to be intimate, to address Him by name. I googled 'names of God' and got a list. I picked out the ones which I felt deeply and wanted to use more often. I was simply amazed when you started preaching about praying for the nation but took some time to focus on the name of God. All glory to God.
When I received that message, I decided the name of God (YHWH) should be the subject matter for this weekly article. Then very early on Monday morning, my wife who did not attend the Sunday church service shared with me a dream about the significance of names which she had on Saturday. In the dream, a very close and dear relative of mine had conceived a baby. My wife advised her to take the issue of choosing the name of the child seriously. She went ahead to give her examples of many people in history who turned out to be exactly what their names meant – good or bad.
Then I was reminded of the sermon “The Name of Jesus” which I preached on 26th March 2017, and a one Joan’s testimony which I later received and wrote about on 29th March 2017 in the article “Bagaza-Iza”.
On the morning she was going to visit LAT after so long a time, Joan had a dream. She saw her mother-in-law’s sister looking sick and frail, ready to pass on. She (mother-in-law’s sister) said she had one more assignment which was to tell Joan the name to give her yet to be conceived child. Having failed to reach Joan on the phone, she walked all the way from her home, frail as she was, to see her. She told Joan it was important to give the child a purposeful name and that name was Bagazaiza.
As you would expect, Joan was very blessed when she visited LAT and the sermon was about names. And after some research, we discovered that the name Bagazaiza means "expanded beauty" because it is a contraction of two Rwandan words (‘bagaza’ meaning ‘they expand’, and ‘iza’ meaning ‘beautiful’).
All this goes to show that the issue of our names is a big deal with God. Now, if the names of humans are that important, think about the incomparable importance of the name of God. God’s name is not ‘God’ neither is it ‘Lord’ nor ‘Allah’. Our God’s name is ‘YHWH’. (Out of reverence, most Jews opted to stop speaking it; they simply refer to Him as Ha Shem, to mean The Name). We need to take time and study what the name of the one true God – YHWH – means. Then we shall experience the benefits that come with that understanding.
“Moreover God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: ‘The LORD (YHWH) God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever” (Exodus 3:15).
Be blessed.