101. He Uses Your Name

Luke 19:5

Do people ever identify you solely by your actions? You know, like, “She’s the soccer girl,” or “He’s that guitar guy.” Sometimes people lose sight of who you really are by simply focussing on this one piece of your character or life. They grab hold of something you’re good at or something you’re into or maybe even something bad you did once and then they just stereotype you by that one thing. How many times have you heard people refer to a kid as a ‘pothead’ or a ‘slut’? And you know as well as I do that you can’t define a whole person with one word... I mean, sure, a kid may smoke marijuana, but there’s so much more to them than that one thing. Sure, a girl may have been with a few guys, but that’s not all there is to know about her. The only way you can sum a whole person up with one word is by using their name. You see, using a person’s name shows that you are getting to know them as an individual instead of just putting them inside a box of something they did one time. One thing I love about Jesus is the fact that he called people by their names when other folks didn’t. After meeting this one man, the Pharisees summed him up by calling him “uneducated.” Jesus called that same man, “Simon Peter.” There was a woman who was known all over town for being possessed by demons, but Jesus called her, “Mary.” Everyone in Jericho hated this one guy because he was “the tax collector.” Jesus looked up into the tree he was hiding in and said, “Zacchaeus, come down. I wanna hang out with you.”