A new name

All things new....that's what God seems to be doing as he wraps up time and history. The first thing he made new was me. In 2 Corinthians Paul writes that if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation (something that has never existed before), and as the bible comes to a close it gradually reveals God's plan to make all things new. His plan is to make a new everything. A new heaven and earth is part of this renovation plan. Amazing...amazing to me because of the vastness of the task, and yet to God it's like rolling up an old tablecloth and putting out a new one. He plans to make a new world and bring heaven down to this new world to literally create a new heaven for us to dwell with him on. God's desire is to renew everything and everyone....if they will trust him to do so. In this grand renovation plan is a subtle, but interesting part of God's plan....it's to even renew my identity. In Revelation 2 Jesus speaks these words,

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"To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it."

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In the book of Daniel I remember the king of Babylon giving Daniel and his friends new names, new identities, to make them "fit" into the Babylonian culture, but with a name change there is also an identity change. We are, in part, identified with and by our names. I'm Mike Messerli, but I'm much more than that. And yet my name says something about me. It talks of my linage, my history, my parents, my past. Imagine getting a new name, a new identity....if in fact, I am a new man in a new world it only makes sense to have a new identity and a new name.....I wonder what mine will be?

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