The Name You're Being Given

Thursday, March 5, 2026

"...are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory..." - 2 Corinthians 3:18

We notice, if we pay attention, that we keep becoming. Something shifts in how we handle a conversation we would have mishandled before, or we find patience in a moment that used to get away from us. The change is often quieter and slower than we expected, but it’s real, and it tends to arrive before we thought we were ready for it. And underneath it all there is a longing that never quite resolves, a sense that whoever we are becoming, there is more still ahead. Maybe that longing is not a problem with us. Maybe it is the first sign something is already in motion.

Jacob, one of the founding figures of the Hebrew people, had been a schemer his whole life. Alone at the Jabbok ford with no plans and nowhere to turn, he was caught in the dark by a divine stranger who would not let him go. They wrestled until daybreak. At a single touch his hip was wrenched out of joint, and he wrestled on, limping.

What he did next stays with us. He refused to let go and held on through the dark while asking for the blessing. But first came a question, "What is your name?" He answered, "Jacob," and he was given a new name, Israel, meaning one who wrestles with God and prevails. The wrestling in the dark was already his becoming into the man God had named.

Paul wrote to a young church in Corinth, and three words cut through, "are being transformed." Not working to become, just being, a work being done in us, not by us. We cannot molt our way into someone new. What we bring is an open face toward Jesus, because turning toward Him is the cooperation itself. No finish line in this lifetime. Just ever-increasing glory, and that longing starts to feel less like frustration and more like evidence of motion.

Merlin Carothers, a pastor and writer, kept noticing a pattern. When someone praised God in a hard situation rather than asking to be removed from it, they began to shift. Joy is not the destination we are walking toward. It’s what we walk with. That cooperation, whenever it finds us, looks like naming one true thing, the struggle, the gap between where we are and who we are becoming, and asking for the blessing within the struggle rather than the exit from it.

When we find ourselves becoming who we longed to be, it rarely feels the way we imagined. We are not arriving at our finished version but already being carried toward one, toward the image of Jesus himself, His hands holding what we could not hold alone. The longing we kept trying to resolve turns out to be the motion of becoming. The wrestling we thought was evidence against us was already the becoming. That is the gift.

Prayer

Father, I know the gap between who I am and who I sense I could be. I am not asking to escape it. I am asking to keep being shaped inside it, to name what is true, hold on, and ask for the blessing. Make me the person I am supposed to be as I go. Amen.