Could he have been reading what the prophet Isaiah once recorded about names changing? Were some of his own emotional and spiritual struggles rooted in what D.J. Butler penned in 1987, when he entitled a song “I Will Change Your Name”? Perhaps it was a struggle with God that he remembered changed Jacob’s life’s trajectory (see the 19th Century artistry by Leon Bonnat here, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, which depicts this). Whatever were the circumstances, D.J. didn’t need to say much with his poetry to get across his point – actually, it really was God’s point. It’s a message to the hurting, the depressed who have lost themselves in life’s maelstrom, a feeling that you’re being sucked downward by something that has you in its power. D.J.’s message comes straight from God Himself. Don’t give up the struggle, and see if He will not change your outlook, the way He did so long ago for some others.
It is rather ironic that a song about changing one’s name is written by a fellow whose background seems so obscured. D.J.’s name is known, but really nothing else besides the few lines of poetry that he used as the foundation for ‘I Will Change Your Name’. But that’s fine, because what he has to say is so universally true. It is a God-message, one which the patriarchs heard in the beginning pages of what God has provided for us today to see how He has related to mankind. His effect wasn’t just a onetime episode. Abram (exalted father) became Abraham (father of many, Genesis 17:5), and his grandson Jacob became Israel (Gen. 32:28; 35:10-11) after he struggled with God (through His angel) all night and pretty much demanded a blessing. God told both of these patriarchs that many nations would be their progeny. Has anyone else in history had so much impact as father and grandfather?! Jacob’s name would no longer be associated with deception (Jacob, the heel-grasper), but instead as Israel (one who struggles with God). That’s quite a reversal. God wasn’t quite through, however. He took so many ordinary people in history and empowered them – Moses, all the prophets, the judges, kings like David, later Paul the apostle; the list goes on and on, including many in the Hebrews 11 chorus. Perhaps Isaiah says it best in his prophecy (Isaiah 62:1-5), as God spun some poetry to lift a nation’s outlook, to a people who felt ‘desolate’ and ‘deserted’ (v. 4), but who would become God’s delight as if they were married to Him. In the New Testament, this same God takes it to another plane through two ‘ordinary men’ (Peter and John, Acts 4:13) with the extraordinary courage to tell the Sanhedrin that the crucified Jesus was not the rejected building stone, but the capstone/cornerstone. Not crushed and crumbled into dust, but glowing and whole after being enshrined as Everlasting King.
He did the amazing for His Messiah-Son, but do you think He’s through? It seems that He has – through Jesus – given us the ultimate model, and D.J. has reminded us that others may view us as ‘wounded’, ‘outcast’, ‘lonely’, and ‘afraid’, but you and I don’t need to remain in that desolate state (in Isaiah’s words). In D.J.’s words, I can acquire more names on the mountaintop than I had in my emotional valley. I get six new names -- confidence, joyfulness, overcoming one, faithfulness, friend of God, one who seeks my face – versus the four that I thought were permanently branded on me. And, as I read the bible He’s preserved for me, I see other examples of transformation, of individuals who were completely human, and yet look what happened. Keep reading. Do you feel ‘ordinary’ or worse? Get the courage injection that they did in Acts 4. Meet Jesus. He says that He might even change your name.
Check out this article by a professor-author on this subject: » “I Will Change Your Name” John Mark Hicks
See information on the image here: File:Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Leon Bonnat.jpg - Wikimedia Commons…The author died in 1922, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. {{PD-1996}} – public domain in its source country on January 1, 1996 and in the United States.