I haven't posted in over a year.
No better time than now I guess.
I wanted to post about the name of our fourth child.
We have experienced so many changes since coming up here to Crystal Lake. The Lord has slowly but surely been cutting away our flesh and teaching us to walk more fully with Him. We have very much poured our lives into our church and our community around us. God has slowly been cutting away our flesh and helping us to lay down lesser things. Little things for me like TV shows that I loved or a laziness and maybe a bit of a complaining spirit. Little things that weren't big yet, but He's just shown me that I don't need those. So much of it is in the heart and maybe not always visible to others, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
The Lord likes to rid those things from us.
I won't cover what God's done in Ben's life, he could tell you if you ask him :) but it's always good and it's usually difficult.
So each of our children's names have significant meaning for what the Lord has been doing in our lives. Ben and I like to say that they are our monuments for the Lord.
Levi's name means "to unite" I felt like as our oldest child he would be the uniter of many children. The Lord was calling us to lay down birth control at the time (which terrified me) and I didn't know how many kids we would have, so leaving that up to the Lord I was trusting Him that He would number them.
Aria's name means wind or air. She was conceived around the time there was a Holy Spirit revival at our church and we saw a tremendous move of the Spirit. Our prayer for her is that she would be Spirit-filled and on fire for the Lord. You can read about it here
You can read about Simeon's name here
We have felt like the Lord was calling us higher into His Kingdom, closer to Him, more responsibility in our lives... all of that.
So we were looking for names that meant strength or ascension or high calling or something like that. None of them seemed right. Until one night Ben and I were on a rare date and talking about this little boy we knew we were having and the name Paul came up. He was a leader of the church and it's also Ben's dad's middle name. The interesting thing is that Paul means "small" it doesn't necessarily fall into the categories we were looking for. But then, it suddenly made sense... when God calls you higher, He also calls you lower. He calls you to greater humility, greater servant hood.
A few days later I heard this scripture:
But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to become first among you, let him be your slave- just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give His life a random for many." Matthew 20:25-28
So with this fourth child, we are understanding that God's desire in our lives is not to be served, but to serve all the more.
We are naming his middle name Allen after my dad''s middle name which means "noble stone" and really, I'm super pumped about this addition because now his name Paul Allen means "small, noble stone" A friend commented, "And what can God do with a small, noble stone?" Ben and I responded in awe, "He can slay a giant."
I love it that the Lord chooses the small things, the insignificant things of this world to glorify Himself.
Lord, may we become less so that You can become more in our lives.
All glory and honor to God.
