Years ago, I knew everything about my life would change. I did not enter into this knowledge by reading a textbook or attending self-help seminars nor by consulting my local church. I knew the details in my life would change and that I would willingly forsake everything I knew about my life in 2004 because of a single visit God paid me on a forested hike. After that, I knew that he was real, and all I had to do was to wait for him and his appointed season or appointed time of life, however, you want to refer to it. And of course, one of those details that I would eventually forsake would be the birth name that my parents gave me: Zachary.

You see over the course of my short 19 year life I had become very wicked and was bent on destroying people‘s lives and sharing with them the pain in the afflictions that I myself felt. This was of course unacceptable and untenable in the eyes of God. Just like Paul’s story in the Bible, where he was persecuting the church of God, putting them in prison, standing by when they were killed, such was becoming my existence. So I had a choice to make it was either life or death. And if I chose life, then I was going to live how God wanted me to live. Which included not harming my fellow man.

Subsequently over the next say 15 or 16 years from time to time people would mistakenly call me the wrong name. Or so I thought it was the wrong name. But the name that all of these unrelated unfamiliar people called me across the years in different places at different times was always the same name. And the name was Joshua. Which means God is salvation.

You see everything about my individual, psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, socially, and of course, spiritually had to be made new. So it follows that my name would change as well. It took me a long time to discern that the Holy Spirit had changed my name, and in fact, had given me a new name. But it eventually dawned on me that whenever people would call me the wrong name somehow their tongues had been taught to call me by a different name. And there is only one that has the power to do that and His name is God.

So the question in today’s prompt is where did your name come from. I suppose I get to answer that on behalf of the two names I have been known by in this life. The first name, Zachary, came from my earthly parents in 1985. And more importantly, at least to me, the second name Joshua comes from God. And so it was earlier this year I went before a judge in the Saint Charles circuit court and filed a petition for an adult name change.