They Call Me By My Store Number

The call opens with four digits.

Not rudely. Nobody is being unkind. A person somewhere has a list and the fastest way to establish which of two hundred and eleven buildings is on the line is to read the number.

Twenty-two seventeen? Yes, speaking.

You have said that sentence about four hundred times.

And last Tuesday you heard it. You actually heard yourself say yes, speaking, to a four digit number, and something in you paused for half a second before you carried on with the call.

It is not an insult. That is what makes it hard to raise with anybody. There is nothing to complain about. The number is efficient and the people using it are doing a job.

But something has happened over four years that nobody designed.

You answer to it now. Not just on the phone. When you think about your own building, the number comes first, before the street name.

And when somebody asked your wife at a thing in the spring which one you have, she said the number, and you noticed, and you did not say anything.

There is a verse where God does something with a name that goes at this directly.

I have surnamed thee

God speaks to a foreign king in Isaiah and says something startling about a man who did not know Him.

I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. (Isaiah 45:4, King James Version)

Surnamed. That is a stronger word than named.

A surname is what places a person. It says whose they are and where they belong. To be surnamed by God is to be given a belonging that comes from His side rather than from any list.

You have been surnamed by God rather than numbered by anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who did it. Isaiah 45:4 says I have surnamed thee as a completed act, and He did it long before there were two hundred and eleven of anything.

Now the clause on the end, because it is the one that undoes any anxiety in this.

Though thou hast not known me. He named a man who was not paying attention. The naming did not depend on the man noticing, agreeing, or being spiritual about it.

That means the naming does not require your cooperation to be true. It has been true for four years while you were saying yes, speaking, to a number.

You have been carrying a name given without any help from you, and Scripture makes the naming unconditional on whether a person was aware of it. The Spirit of God is the one who does that, and it is written in Isaiah 45 that He did it for a man who did not know Him at all.

And here is what that does to Tuesday.

The half second pause was not a wound. It was recognition. Something in you knew that a code and a name are different objects, and it flagged it.

You are not being slowly erased, and the Holy Spirit is the one who raised that pause in you. The written word says the surnaming was finished before the number ever existed, and He raised it on purpose.

Efficiency is not the enemy

Let me be fair to the number, because a grievance about it would make you tiresome and would not help.

The number is genuinely useful. Two hundred and eleven buildings need distinguishing and a street name is ambiguous and a number is not. The person on the phone has forty calls and no ill will.

There is nothing to fight here. Nobody is doing anything wrong.

What has happened is quieter than that. A tool that was made for a list has quietly become an address, and an address becomes an identity if nothing else is ever said out loud.

You have been shaped by a habit rather than by an insult, and it is written that God surnames a person independently of what anybody else calls them. The Spirit of God is the one who can tell those apart, and Isaiah 45:4 is where the real address is given.

And the correction is not a campaign. This is worth saying because a man in your position can turn a small thing into a stand, and a stand about a store number would make you look ridiculous.

You are not going to ask anybody to change anything. You are going to add one thing to the front of a call, and that is all.

You are able to do something so small that nobody will even notice it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the work in it. Scripture puts the naming in God's mouth rather than in a policy, and it does not need to be visible to anybody but you.

Say your own name back

So here is the thing to do and it takes two seconds.

The next time a call opens with the number, say your own name back. Not instead. After.

Twenty-two seventeen? Yes, this is Daniel.

That is it. Ordinary voice, no emphasis, and then straight on with whatever the call is about.

You are saying a true thing out loud rather than making a point, and Isaiah 45:4 says I have called thee by thy name and I have surnamed thee. The Spirit of God is the one who works through a sentence that small, and He does not need it to be a stand.

The reason it matters is not that the person on the phone will start using it. They probably will not, and that is fine, and it is not the point.

The point is that you will have said your own name out loud in that context, and after about a dozen calls the number will have stopped being the first thing that arrives when you think about your own building.

You have been living in a place where nobody has said your name in four years, and the Holy Spirit is the one who restores the order of those two things. The written word puts a name and a belonging in the mouth of God Himself, and Isaiah 45 is the whole warrant for saying it.

Then go in and do the work exactly as you always have, and the list is exactly what it was.