Danny’s mom loved and listened to what was then called Country and Western music all the time. One of her favorites was Freddy Fender. Now Freddy wasn’t his real name. He was actually born Baldemar Garza Huerta but changed his name legally in 1958. He thought he could sell records better with a simpler name.
Those years and that style of music are pretty much gone now. But changing names in music and acting are still going on. Why would anybody want to change who they are?
Oh beloved, this is the amazing thing of faith. Jesus comes and saves your life, forever. You get a new name written in glory. You become a completely new person. Such is the life of faith – you can be who you are only brand new.
God wants you to know this morning that you have been changed. You don’t have to change your name to become new or to start fresh. You just have to walk out the faith that Christ has deposited in you. Trauma can be soothed. A bad name can be removed. Jesus will never know you as who you were before Christ. He is the game changer and the life changer.
God also wants you to know that His love saved you, sealed you, made you new and has given you access to His rich and precious promises. Freddy Fender may have changed his name but he was still who he had always been. You beloved, are not who you were. Even if you were good, it wasn’t good enough. And even if you were bad, you were never so bad Jesus wouldn’t come and get you and change your life. What a blessing to know that you are now considered blessed instead of cursed, joyful instead of mourning, honored instead of a disgrace, full of hope instead of futility. You have become an ambassador of faith in a world full of chaos. Knowing who you are in Christ is imperative – the most important thing you will ever need to know. It will give you everything you need for life and godliness and wrap it all up in the simplest of words – Hope.
God loves you and He’s for you. Run to Him this morning and ask Him to renew your desires to know Him better. Ask Him for the faith of a lion to stand guard over your heart and the faith of a child to believe all you need as a believer to have this rich walk with Jesus. And live, beloved, as a new creation, in the Light of the Truth in His Word.
I Peter 2: 9-10 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy.
I Peter 1: 3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you
Romans 6: 6 We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.
Titus 3: 5 He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.