And His Name Is…

Disclaimer:  Please forgive my long delay in posting his name.  I intended to write this and post this morning, but situations wouldn’t allow it.  I’m so sorry.  

And on with the post…

We sure have had fun reading all your ideas.  Actually many, many, many of them were names that were on our ‘short list’.

As most of you know, naming our treasures is a significant decision in our family.  We know that throughout Biblical history scriptures mention what a name means, and then that name/meaning seems to coincide with their life.

My Dwight was named after Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist of old who led many people to Christ.  Dw said that he always felt honored to have been named after such a Godly man.

Names definitely make a difference!

Another interesting thing is that when a significant life change occurred, often Almighty God changed a person’s name at that life-altering juncture.

Abram became Abraham

Saul became Paul

and so on.

We have named our littler boys old testament prophets names:

Isaiah 

which means

“salvation by God”

Truly our Isaiah was rescued when God moved mountains the size of the Himalayans and reversed the decision of the Ch*nese government.

Elijah

which means

“my God is the Lord”
{which for personal reasons is very significant to our hearts}

When I speak or pray over my boys I speak of their calling to be mighty men of God, courageous and brave, outspoken for godliness, non-compromising – just like the prophets they were named after.

Did you know that scripture speaks that the prophets Elijah and Isaiah both were defenders of the orphan and widow?

They were!

Isn’t that powerful?

Sooooo,

without further ado….

The name we chose together is another Old Testament prophet:

Nehemiah 

a powerful prophet of God who was used to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

Nehemiah 

which means

“comforted by God”

And yes, Nehemiah is the name of the Godly man who is pastor to thousands in the underground church in a country {not Ch*na} where the gospel is not allowed.  He is the man whose calendar and money I found.  Our son will hear that story often, as well as the courage that that Nehemiah has and the legacy he is leaving as he selflessly denies comforts to share the life-changing message of Jesus Christ.  We have prayed often for that Nehemiah in the foreign country.

Also there once was a man named Watchman Nee.  Watchman Nee was a Godly pastor and leader in Ch*na who spent the last 20 years of his life in prison having been put there for his faith.   We will be telling our Nehemiah the stories of Watchman Nee…a powerful, courageous man of God whose books and quotes still encourage Christians worldwide.

Our Nehemiah’s nickname will be “Nee”….after Watchman Nee.

Nehemiah’s middle name will be “Judson”after Adoniram Judson – the first missionary to leave America for distant lands.  He served in Burma and his goal was to translate the Bible for the Burmese people and have a church with 100 Burmese attending.  By the time he passed away, he had successfully translated the Bible into Burmese and there were 100 churches...not 100 in attendance in one church – but 100 churches!  Only God through an ordinary man who cared more about the Burmese than his own personal comfort.

 If you have not read the Adoniram Judson biography, you will weep – such a amazing man of God who cared about the Burmese to persist against all odds.  {I feel like such a wussy when I read the stories of missionary heroes.}

So as we speak over our three young sons, we will be reminding all three of them of the significance of their prophetic names and the calling that rests on a prophet.

Thank you for praying for our 

Nehemiah Judson.

He is, no doubt, a precious treasure from the heart of God.

25 thoughts on “And His Name Is…

  1. Awwww! Nehemiah wasn't even on my radar! Nice name pick!

    We, too, change the names of our children brought into our family via adoption. It makes more sense to the average person when the child is from a foreign country but its harder for them to understand when the children are from the U.S.

    We truly believe in blessing the child with a significant name change for such a life change as adoption. Our oldest boys were 4 and 6 when they came to us and we were so glad that their names fit them so well!

    Neatest story: We chose their new names and moved our oldest son's first name to be a middle name and kept our younger sons middle name but dropped the first name. After doing some research it turned out that the first name we saved (that became a middle name) was the birth fathers name and the middle name we kept was the birth grandfathers name! The Lord completely directed our steps in what was significant to keep!

  2. Oh, I do love that name. We have a Nehemiah in our church. He is 6 (or maybe 7) and a precious, precious little guy. We all love him. His 4 brothers are named after prophets, as well.

  3. Love it! One of our pastors named their little guy Nehemiah. Joel's dad wanted us to name Benjamin 'Judson'. We just couldn't do it since our Hudson was one year older. We would have had a Hudson and a Judson. haha
    Love your new little guy's name and i love him. 🙂

    1. Trina, I attended a small Christian school and used the Accelerated Christian Education / School of Tomorrow curriculum. There were "cartoon" characters used throughout the grades to teach wisdom, character, etc. One of the families had twin boys whom they named Hudson and Judson (after Hudson Taylor and Adoniram Judson). =D

      Lonni

  4. LOVE that name, Linny!! And I love to hear how you chose it, he will undoubtedly feel so blessed that you chose a name with so much meaning for him 🙂
    Big hugs to you and yours!

  5. Great name, I like how you choose to re-name your children after they come into your family. We kept the names of our boys when we adopted them, they were 7 at the time, but I totaly respect one's different decision to make the change in name signifying a change in their circumstances. One thing though…..the scripture never says God changed Saul's name to Paul. There is great significance in why and how God changed both Abram's and Sarai's name (adding Hebrew letter "heit"/h, which is part of His covenant name YHWH. But He did NOT change Saul's into Paul. "Paul' is merely the Roman 'version' of Saul. Nothing significant there. Blessings on your newest treasure!

  6. Congratulations on the addition of Nehemiah to your family! You seem to be one baby step ahead of me. I, too, have had a precious girl drop from heaven and she should have arrived in the States today. I'm waiting with eager anticipation to know when she'll be brought to me.

  7. Looking at nee's beautiful face, I can see why you fell in love with him. He looks like tyler! I think you may have posted pics of tyler previously when he was little…but that's what I thought. I pray the transition is going well for all of you. A friend of mine wrote a book called songs of my families about her adoption…she was acciently placed with the wrong family…its an amazing story. I will write you a separate email about some things I want to do for orphan wares…I make jewelry. Everything I make is one of a kind, just like each orphan, so we will need to work together to figure out how to sell things on the site. And I need to get to stitching! God bless. Have a great day

    1. Beautiful name, which I haven't heard for a while! And beautiful to see the Torah scroll in your post! It was very important to me to have a Hebrew name for our son. He is named after his great-grandfather. His great-grandmother was still alive (at 99) when he was born and I was able to call her from the hospital and tell her our son would be named after her late husband. My MIL (who was with her at the time) told me afterwards that her face was radiant.

      Names are so important, and I love the one you picked – hope he does too!

Leave a Reply to Rachel Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>