The days seem to pass slowly, but the years fly like the wind.
‘I choose joy. I may not feel it, but God has appropriated it and I choose it.’
Please read Daniel 1:6-7. Write each of the young men’s names below and… what they were renamed:
“Daniel – God is my judge” renamed “Belteshazzar – Bel will protect”
“Hananiah– Yah has been gracious” renamed “Shadrach – inspired of Aku”
“Mishael – Who is what God is?” renamed “Meshach – belonging to Aku”
“Azariah – Yah has helped” renamed “Abednego – servant of Nego”
Considering “Yah” is a contraction for “Yahweh,” what did each of the four names have in common?
“They all referenced God and gave Him the power and glory and praise.”
How do you think Nebuchadnezzar intended to shape their destiny through these [new] names?
“He hoped they’d forget about their God and bow to his gods.”
“Shem,” the name of the son of Noah given to his descendants, the Semites, “is, in fact, the common Hebrew word for ‘name.’” God purposely chose a people (the Hebrews) from among the Semites to make a name or “shem” for Himself. Imagine, then, the unspeakable offense of being a “shem” or “name” bearer of God, called by an idolatrous name. (“☼ Wow!” you noted in the margin next to this)
Has the world (or worse yet, a loved one) ever tried to give you a bad name or a bad identity? “yes” If so, what? “My parents labeled me a ‘zealot.’”
Did you fall for it? Elaborate somewhat. “Yes, but I try to instead wear it with pride as a badge of success, since its root is zeal for the Lord.”
Are you still falling for it? If so, how? “Yes, I strive to be zealous, even when, like Beth’s daughter, I may not naturally feel like it.”
Dearest Rachel –
I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand why your folks took such offense at your attempts at ascertaining whether they were truly “saved” or not. You would think they would be able to tell you that “of course, I trusted Christ for my salvation, just like you did that one Easter when you were eleven; here’s when and how it happened,” and give you the details – or if they couldn’t remember the specifics of time and place, like me, an approximation would suffice – and that would be the end of it. You wouldn’t have been pestering them continually for the last few years of their life if they had done as much. Even if they were offended by the thought that, as the saying goes, you couldn’t come up with sufficient evidence to convict them of being truly Christian were it a crime, that could have been a wake-up call to them to start walking the walk a little bit more, rather than getting upset about it.
What’s worse is that, the more defensive they got about your questioning them, the more you began to conclude that they weren’t truly saved at all, for the reason I mentioned above. And thus began a race against time to cause them to see the light, which, again, seemed to chafe them, for whatever reason, and call you a zealot. I wonder if they thought we were part of a cult; it wouldn’t have been the first time that our brand of Christianity would have been mistaken for such.
It’s possible that they simply believed in the whole idea of “as long as my good deeds outweigh my bad ones, God will let me into heaven” that so many people do, but which is totally antithetical to real Christianity. It would explain their uncertainty, as you never know how much good you have to do in order to be good enough – and also explain their antipathy to your line of questioning; how dare you claim to be certain of your eternal destiny!
Of course, that’s the whole point that caused you to question them; a true Christian would know that no one can be “good enough” to be let into heaven. If that was possible, there would have been pointless for Him to send Jesus to pay the penalty for our sin; we could do it ourselves, with enough “good” deeds. The fact that they didn’t seem to understand this suggested to you that they didn’t know the Truth, let alone respond to it in the same way you had, and as a result, their eternal destiny was in question.
So you persisted, much to their mix of chagrin and irritation (and possibly worse; you didn’t always go into details with me about your discussions/confrontations with your folks on this topic). As long as their answer (or lack of answer) wasn’t what you expected it to be, you continued to try to get them to the point where they ought to understand how to get to heaven, so that they could be there to greet you when you got there (which you assumed to be a long way away, in contrast to them. Hey, they were already in their eighties when you were writing these responses).
Did it work? You would know by now, I suppose, but I can’t speak for it from my vantage point. At least you never gave up on them until the last. Twofeathers claimed to have gotten a confession of faith out of your mother at one point (it may be that the “second childhood” she suffered from brought on the childlike faith she needed to get to that point), and we found old writings from your father that suggested he knew his way through theology when he was much younger as well, but you never got to see it yourself until you arrived, either to be greeted by them or not. But at least you would be greeted as a “good and faithful servant” by the Lord Himself, and that is a title (if not a name per se) worth bearing.
Letters to Rachel 