Thursday 30 June 2011

Naming a Child

The Bible is full of people being named a certain way for a certain reason.

People even get renamed as they enter God's purposes. Abram - Abraham, Saul - Paul, your name is important.

So we just had the massive privilege, and slightly scary responsibility of naming our child.

When we had a hard time in our journey to starting a family we held on to the words of the Psalmist: Psalm 30 verse 5, "weeping may remain for a night, but joy comes in the morning."

We listened to this Jesus Culture song over and over again.



and in doing so, we decided, long before we were pregnant again, that if we had a little girl her name would be "Joy".

Because God is good, and because through Him Joy comes.

Two friends came over for dinner. Before they left they asked to pray for us. As they were praying for us to conceive, the guy just stopped, and in a loud voice said "I want to prophecy in Jesus name that Joy is coming to this household".

Esther squeezed my hand.

That was it.

Joy.

God had spoken.

When we went for a dating scan we found that the pregnancy had started the same weekend we were prophecied over.

God was at work.

Further to all this her great grandmother on her Mum's side was called Joy. Accounts of those who knew her describe her as a strong willed, kind and godly lady. That is three things we want for Joy.

God has promised.

God has spoken.

And God has given our family a heritage.

Joy it is.

2 comments:

Pauline said...

What a wonderful inspiring story! A lovely name- the name of one of the fruits of the Spirit, too! I know your friends, both near and far,have shared in your "journey," felt your pain, silently wept with you from a distance, and are now rejoicing with you! How wonderful for your friend who spoke the prophecy to see God's words come to fruition!

Auntie Doris said...

That's a lovely story. As someone who is trying (very unsuccessfully I might add) to conceive I envy your faith.