I Will Give You a New Name

In the Bible, God often changed people's names after they encountered Him to show that they were different people now that they belong to Him. Esther Fleece Allen thinks all of us can learn something from that. There's such significance to naming that I thought, I'm missing something. I'm missing something in my walk with God because these labels I'm attaching to are more comfortable to me than living out of who God says I am.

And something needs to change. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You'll find us online at familylifetoday.com. What are the names or the labels that define you?

And are those names or labels that God has assigned to you or that others have given you? We're going to talk more about that today with Esther Fleece Allen. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. You know, it occurs to me that probably the deepest kind of pain, woundedness that we can experience is family pain. Absolutely. Marriage, family connectedness. We can experience pain in any relationship, but when it happens with blood, with kin, that's probably the deepest and most profound. And if that's the case, then the deepest work God can do, the deepest healing God can do is when He steps in and brings beauty from those ashes, right? I think marriage has an effect that there's something, too, with kids, with parents, that the pain is so deep and we don't generally know how to express it or how to heal from it. I mean, personally, as many know, the greatest pain in my life was from my mom and dad. And yet the greatest victories and the greatest presence of the very face of God in our lives has been the healing through that pain. I would say that the pain in our marriage is a result of the pain from our past. And we carry it into the present. And you didn't even realize.

Exactly. So, we've got a friend of yours joining us on Family Life Today. You want to introduce Esther again to our listeners? This is Esther Fleece Allen, and she's written two books, and we're talking about both books.

One is No More Faking Fine, and the other one is a book called Your New Name. And Esther, welcome. It's so good to have you with us. I feel like our family is here. I know. Thank you.

It's so good to be in the room with you and Dave. Why did you name this one your new name? Well, and it was interesting because I was actually going through a physical name change. I had recently gotten married and was wondering, do I keep my old name Fleece? Did you think about that?

I did. You know, I actually was always embarrassed of my name, both names, actually. And then when my father left our family, I was really embarrassed to have Fleece as a last name. But as I was writing Your New Name, you know, I was realizing that God gives us new names in Scripture, and so sometimes it's hard to let go of old labels and even good names and good seasons.

It's hard to move forward sometimes. But I found in Scripture that there's this theme about newness, that God is always doing a new thing, and one of the things that He does is give us a new name. And I felt He was giving me a new name, physically even, here on earth, and marrying my husband Joel, who comes from a wonderful Christian family.

They've served God for generations, and it was so neat to take on this new physical name as God was giving me new spiritual names as well as I was writing the book. Esther, you've shared with us already, your dad was besieged with mental illness issues. He was violent in the home. He and your mom divorced, your mom remarried, and then she left you. Did you have any ongoing connection with your stepfather?

No, no, yeah. So, at age 13, you're without a family and without a part of your identity at that point. What do you do with that when you're 13 years old and you don't belong to anybody?

Well, it's very difficult. I think I found my home in the Scriptures. It says, you know, even if your mother forsakes you, that God will not.

It says, the Lord says in Hebrews 13, 5, that He will never leave me or forsake me. And so, by the grace of God, I was introduced to the gospel, and God adopted me into His family and then provided physical families for me to live with so I didn't have to go into the foster care system. I wasn't lost. But it was very hard not belonging, honestly, Bob. It was hard not even having a last name of one of the families that took me in.

I mean, for years I wanted to be an Ellis, or I wanted to be a Mirand, I wanted to be an Elam. I wanted to have that association with these different families that provided family to me. But I had to keep going back to, okay, I'm an adopted daughter of God, and my identity and my inheritance is in Him. So, even if I'm not chosen here, you know, by a physical family or a physical husband, you know, I didn't get married until later in my 30s. I had to believe that I was chosen and accepted and adopted by God. I would think a lot of 13-year-olds would look at their life circumstance and rather than running to God, they would say, how can I believe in a God who, here I am, He could have prevented all of this, He could have placed me in an intact, loving family, this is my story.

They'd run away from Him and reject Him. Why didn't you? I don't have any spiritual answer other than He was the only one that never left me. I thought you were going to say, because you were in a great church.

Who had that, too? I was in a great church, and that did help. To that, do you remember, Ann, do you remember when you first knew who Esther was at Kensington and how you heard about her? Actually, I got to know her brother, because her brother was friends with our son. And I remember Esther being cute, I remember her being energetic, like sharp, a go-getter. But I had no idea any of this. Of the background?

No, I didn't have any idea. Esther really was, and you can tell even now, you were the light that walked in a room. And it's so amazing because we didn't know the darkness, but you shined.

You'd walk in. And you still do. You know, and now we know you were sort of faking fine, but there was still a sense of, even, you know, I think about your wedding day when you had different dads walk you down the aisle in place of your father, because they really were dads. God provided in a unique way His presence through another family, right?

Yes. And so, I mean, even that moment, what did that feel like walking down the aisle? To your new name.

Yeah, I mean, I never thought I would get married. I believed a lot of labels. Some of them were true. I was orphaned, you know, and I had to lament that. And I was a victim, and I needed to grieve that. But I think I was not identifying with them for too long. I just didn't know the new names that God had for me and maybe even how to live out of them.

And so, for years, I didn't even want to date because I just thought I was unwanted and unadoptable and unworthy. And so, I remember distinctly when God was taking me on this journey of believing who I really am, because it's not just enough to, like, read the Bible. Like, we're really tasked to believe God and to believe the words of God.

And I felt like the Lord had whispered to me, you are going to be a good bride because you already are a good bride. You're serving the church. You love the church. You don't gossip about the church. You don't slander about the church.

You're not using the church. All these things that would make a good physical bride here on earth, you're already a good spiritual bride to me. And it was just this encouragement that God was giving me in my own times with him. You know, I didn't go on Facebook, oh, God called me a bride today. You know, it was just this, like, reassurance that God saw me as his bride, and he was actually proud to have me as his bride. When you said you didn't know if you'd ever get married, was it because you didn't know that marriage was an institution that you wanted to be in, or because you saw yourself as damaged goods and didn't know that anyone would want you? Damaged goods, Bob. That was definitely, that was one of the labels, I believe, for years.

And, you know, part of that was, as Ann's talked about, just the wounds that I didn't even know how to identify. And I just thought, if my own parents didn't want to stick around for me, what man would really want me? So when a guy met you in your 20s and thought, she's cute and she's nice, and he would want to get to know you and maybe ask you out? It's called the friend zone. They got to stay in the friend zone. I have lots of great guy friends to this day. And they stayed in the friend zone because?

They stayed in the friend zone. Well, I mean, I would like to say, because I was, you know, serving the Lord like Paul and felt this called a singleness, and it was just really, I had a lot of fear. I had a lot of fear, and I felt I wanted to protect myself. And how did Joel break down those walls?

What happened? Well, a lot of the breaking happened before I even met Joel, was learning these new names that God says I'm chosen. God actually says I'm beautiful.

He delights over me. How did you hear those names, Esther? How did you come to realize that? I would like to say I was spiritually mature enough to hear great sermons and apply them, but sometimes. Honestly, and it was in these quiet moments with God and just reading the Bible and realizing I related more when God was like correcting someone in the Old Testament.

Like sometimes He would say, you're stiff-necked people. Me too. And I was at the time living with one of these spiritual families, and I was broken because I felt like my life wasn't what I thought it should be or where I thought it should be. And so I was processing my quiet time with this family, and I said, I'm probably just a stiff-necked person. I'm like, the Israelites here. And they said, where are you seeing that? You're living obediently.

You love God. And so they had to help me see the labels I was living out of and the labels I was believing. And I think that's for many of us. We need other people in our circle to say, who do you see yourself as and what are you hearing?

Because many times it's accusations. It's not the voice of God that we are allowing to speak over us. And so I needed the help of other believers to really show me who I was in Christ. So when we hear these names in our head, and you start your book with this concept, what's in a name, there's a part of me that thinks, oh, it's just, I hear myself saying unworthy or unwanted.

No big deal. But you start the book by saying what's in a name is very important because those names that you attach to yourself or allow others to attach to you can define you, right? It's so critical, Dave. And especially after studying it, I've seen that there's so many things that God does in His name and for the glory of His name. And it's a commandment to not take His name in vain. I mean, God takes naming very, very seriously. And so as I looked at Scripture, I realized these labels that I'm attaching to myself based on relationship status or circumstances, like where are those coming from and why do I take those on as my identity? Come to find out the word label in the original language is hardly ever spoken.

When you see the word label, it's like somebody is calling you something. But yet if you were to research how many times name appears in Scripture, it is woven throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. We're to do things in the glory for the name of God. We know that our names are written in the book of life. There's such significance to naming that I thought, I'm missing something. I'm missing something in my walk with God because these labels I'm attaching to are more comfortable to me than living out of who God says I am.

And something needs to change. I had a friend that we were in discussion about this, these names that we believe that we don't even know or realize we've attached to ourselves because it's been such a habit for years. I remember writing down what are the lies that I have believed about myself.

And so many were unworthy, unclean, not enough, alone, ugly. So many of these names that I didn't realize, like, whoa, I've been carrying these? And she described it, she said, you know what it's like, Ian? It's like wearing a pair of sweatpants after the end of the day. You come home and what do you want to put on? You want to put on your old sweatpants because you're comfortable in them.

You're used to them. And so to stop calling yourself those names is like taking off those sweatpants and putting on something new that doesn't feel comfortable at first. Because this new name is something like, oh, wait, I've known that in my head, but I haven't felt it in my heart. Because you've known, Esther, theologically and biblically what God says about you is true. How did you get it to go down into your heart to start believing it?

Yeah, it's still an ongoing process and I love that example that you give. You know, I was speaking at an event and before I got up to speak, there was a man there who shared his testimony and sadly, he had cheated on his wife for years. They were there, thankfully, to say that their marriage was restored.

But just for years, he lived as an unfaithful husband. And his kids were there hearing this testimony and they share this testimony all over. Well, I got up there and had a talk about our new names. And I was really teaching from the book of Ruth and how Naomi, whose name means sweet and pleasant, in very difficult circumstances, Naomi renamed herself Mara, which means bitter.

This is a bad name to rename yourself. I felt like my message in that time was, we don't see in Scripture where we're to take on our own renaming. God gives us names that are woven throughout Scripture. He tells us who we are and He speaks to us about who we are.

So, we're not to like rename ourselves in the middle of a storm or in the middle of a difficulty. And at the end of this talk, this man came up to me in tears and he said, today my new name is faithful husband. You know, this man, I'm so grateful he turned away from living an adulterous life.

But that almost wasn't the end of his story. I think sometimes we can think, well, we're just supposed to be saved or we're just supposed to confess or we're just supposed to repent and then move on. But God never just leaves us in that. You know, even if we're called to share our testimony around the world, God has new names for us that He doesn't want us identifying so deeply with that brokenness. You know, God never renames somebody out of their sin in Scripture. God never renames somebody because of their shame. God renames somebody because of the future that He sees for them. That's why He says, Abram, you're going to be Abraham, you're going to be the father of nations, even before Abraham ever bore children.

And Eve is the giver of life, ever before she ever bore children. God names us out of who we're going to become, not because of our past. And so this man needed a new name, not just forgiveness and repentance.

He needed a new name and that was faithful husband that day. And I realized, what are my new names? So talk about the wrestling between, because actually I'm sitting here looking at two women that I know have wrestled from the old identity, the old name.

Sort of stuck there for decades for both of you. And I don't know if Bob and I are in the same thing, but now you start to understand a new identity and a new song and a new life and a new creature. And I know that isn't just, oh, yesterday was this and then today is this. There's that back and forth, right, that goes on.

How do you wrestle through that? Because you're pulled back often and you know it's not who you are, it's who you were, but now you have to live in this new name. Talk about that struggle. I love that question, Dave, because there is a tension, you know, about the old and the new. And even as Christians, we're called to share our testimonies of what God has done.

So many times we do have to remember the old and then make a distinction of here's who I am now. But I think the greatest example to me in Scripture is the story of Jacob, who is wrestling with God. And in the middle of Jacob wrestling with God, God says, what is your name? And it was in that moment that God renames Jacob and he names him Israel.

It wasn't after Jacob, like, cleaned up his life, Jacob didn't go and restore his relationship with Esau in that moment. I mean, it was right smack dab in the wrestling with God, God renamed him. And that gave me such hope as, like, I might not have all the answers of reconciliation with my biological family. I might not ever be married. But, like, right here in the middle of the wrestle, I can ask God for a new name and I can ask, what do you have for me in the future? And can the future be different from the past that I came from? And what do you do when you find yourself slipping back to the old name, the old identity, either in your thoughts or in your actions?

What do you do? Because that's not going to go completely away, like you never remember. But how do you dig out of that? Yeah, I think that really the only times I'm seeing in Scripture when God says, remember no more. You know, I used to think that meant, like, just move on, forget the past, just join another small group, go get another accountability partner.

Like, I just thought it was all action based. When God's saying, like, remember the past no more, it's because the Israelites were blaming God. And so He's saying, like, in order to move forward, please stop blaming Me and move forward, see that I'm doing a new thing in you.

See that I'm calling you forth to new things. And so it doesn't mean that, like, the time in the desert is erased or that the abuse just goes away or that the marriage is just healed overnight. But there comes a point in our walk with God that we stop blaming God, we remember no more, and we say, God, help me move forward. I need your strength to move forward. And by His Spirit, He helps us to move forward out of these new names.

It is not overnight. I think for many of us, it's for the rest of our lives, we're going to be wrestling with these new names and these labels, and we have to choose to believe God. You know, it says in even the book of Daniel, after he survived the fiery furnace, he praised the name of God. He survived that furnace because he believed God.

And we have the opportunity to believe God about who He says we are. Esther, there's something about marriage, you've probably learned this over the years, that even the parts of our past, our baggage that we've been able to successfully keep closed off and hidden, and even maybe managed on our own, all of a sudden in marriage, some of these things come to the surface, they pop out, and we're like, where did that come from? Why am I even acting that way? How long have you and Joel been married now? Three years, so I'm an expert. In three years of marriage, have you had some of the old patterns, old habits, things where you go, why did I respond to him that way?

And now you can go, oh, that's because of what was built into me when I was five years old. Yeah, you know, early on in our marriage, my first book came out, and so I was on the road speaking. I really wanted to be a good wife, so I would put food in the crock pot in the morning, and I would try to be home that evening. But there was one instance in particular, he got caught up with work, and so I flew back into town and he wasn't there. And Bob, it just triggered this abandonment issue. I was so upset with him, and I didn't handle it like I should have. I felt like he abandoned me. And of course, I mean, we were happily married, we were newlyweds, we were super in love. He just was running late, but he didn't tell me because he was newly married.

He didn't know you're supposed to do that. And I just, I was so afraid that I was being abandoned in that moment. It's interesting, marriage was an institution that I ran from for years because it did cause me deep pain as a child to see divorce happen and abuse and abandonment.

But it has been the greatest tool of healing in my life. And so when he came home, and after we had to work through that, and then bringing even a counselor in to help me through that, I'm so grateful that that root isn't there anymore. And it was through the love of my husband and loving me through that, that I didn't have to stay stuck in that fear of abandonment. We talked about how guys might have been attempting to pursue you, and you kept them in the friend zone. How did Joel break through the friend zone?

How did he get you to open up and say, okay, I'm open to marriage? I had resigned from my job. There was a season of life I was living through, some pretty severe stalking from my biological father. And you share about this in your first book, right?

I do, I do. And truthfully, I didn't know if my faith was going to survive. I felt I was trying to do all the right things to please God, and my circumstances weren't changing. And I've always connected to God. I'm a feeler, so I've felt his presence, and it just wasn't the same. It was kind of like a dark night of the soul.

You've heard probably people reference that before. And I knew scripture said to worship God with your heart and soul and mind and strength. And so the only thing I needed to do was just to go study him, because I thought I'm not connecting with him emotionally, and so I'm going to just go study who God is and just stay in the faith, whatever I can do to stay in the faith and endure. And I found myself at Oxford University studying theology, and my classes overlapped with my now-husband, Joel. And Joel was actually in class with a spiritual father, one of the four men that walked me down the aisle who later married us.

His name's Jason Elam. And Jason had observed Joel for a whole year in this class of theology, and Jason knew not to tell me he had somebody in mind for me. But as I went to do a similar program, our classes overlapped, and I guess it surprised me. I was more open than I thought. And you know, Joel, within that first week, even asked Jason permission to start dating me. And that meant a lot, because I was going through so much trauma with my father biologically. And so for this man, Joel, to ask a spiritual father if he could date me, I knew that he was safe, and I knew that he was different. So listeners understand, it wasn't so much that he was asking for permission.

He was wanting to be careful, and he was asking somebody who knew you better than he knew you, is it safe for me to pursue without doing damage? That's the care he had for you, right? It was really a way of honoring me.

You know, I think sometimes our culture can—we see this rise of feminism defined in really weird terms that are not pro-women. I mean, the way that Joel pursued me was the most pro-woman thing a man could do. And he just cared about me as a person, not about what was in it for him.

And there was just such intentionality there, and I'm glad that I was open. Yeah, and I'll tell you, meeting Joel, and even watching you two at the weekend to remember, he loves you. He adores you. He cares for you. He's careful with you.

He's got a gentle spirit. You're going to make her cry. She's starting to tear up right here. Anne and I commented on it, just as we sat with you Friday night and talked. It's like there's a cherishing that God's given you through this man that you missed for many years.

That was so beautiful. I mean, we felt like we're looking at the heart of God for you and for everyone. It's a picture of the title of your book. God has a new name, a new future, a new day. There's a new name that God blesses us with. It's from the resurrection.

It's new life. And some of the greatest people we know will never get married, so it's not that that's the crown of achievement. But I am grateful that I was given this gift.

I was grateful that I'm given this name of bride. But that's the thing about all of our new names, whatever those new names are, they're better than we could see for ourselves. They're more beautiful than we could have written for ourselves. And that's the hope for the listener, is that we don't stay stuck in the brokenness.

We don't get renamed out of the sin. That God has new names and new seasons for every single one of us. And they're more beautiful than we could have ever imagined. I'm so grateful that mine came in the form of Joel. And I'm glad you guys got to see him. Well, and we're grateful that you have helped all of us understand that we're supposed to live in how God sees us, and not in our past, and not in even the self-talk, and not in what the enemy whispers in our ear about who we are. Because one of his great tactics is to say, this is who you are. I mean, look, this is who you've been, this is what you've done, of course this is who you are. And God says, I see you differently.

And we should listen to his voice and look at what the Scriptures say is true about us. And Esther, thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for sharing your wisdom on all of this. And great to meet you, great to have you here.

Thank you. And thank you for the books, too. Thank you for your new book, Your New Name, saying goodbye to labels that limit.

And your first book, No More Faking Fine, Ending the Pretending. We've got both of these books in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can go online at familylifetoday.com to order a copy of either or both of the books from Esther Fleece Allen. Again, our website is familylifetoday.com. If it's easier to order by calling, our number is 1-800-FL-TODAY. That's 800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY.

Ask for the books by Esther Fleece Allen when you get in touch with us. David Robbins, who is the president of Family Life, is in the studio with us today. This has been quite a season for us here, hasn't it? Well, we're walking through it just like everyone else, and it is certainly a unique season. And I just want to take a moment to thank you for all the ways we've heard from you during this pandemic. We love hearing from you and knowing what you're walking through, because it really helps us adapt to how we're bringing help and hope in this unique time. And we cherish getting to pray specifically for you with the prayer requests you send in. And we're humbled by the way many of you continue to give generously to help us creatively serve families in this time.

It's really been energizing in some ways, even though there's plenty of pain we're all walking through. It's been energizing for us as a team to help you and what we're hearing you and your family need. Hopefully you've listened to some of the special Family Life Today episodes or read or watched some of the resources our team is providing based on what you've shared. And whether it's helping you grieve and comfort others at a distance or ways to face a layoff as a family or dealing with impatience with your kids, because I know I needed to read that resource, thank you for telling us where you are hurting and what would be helpful. We are here to be a trusted friend and resource to you and your family during this time.

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Again, donate online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate. Now, tomorrow we're going to have a conversation about the value and importance and worth of women. Eric Shoemaker and Elise Fitzpatrick join us to talk about how we can elevate the role of women in our homes, in our churches, in our culture today. I hope you can tune in for that. We want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, David Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.