Priscilla Shirer - I Say My Name
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Summary
Priscilla Shirer shares a personal story from her teenage years when she changed her name to "DK" at a new school, only to have her mother firmly remind her that only the ones who gave her life have the authority to name her. Drawing from Judges 6:11-12, where the angel of the Lord calls the fearful, hiding Gideon a "valiant warrior," she emphasizes that our true identity comes solely from God, not from circumstances, past mistakes, others' opinions, or even our own labels. Ultimately, we are who God declares us to be—chosen, redeemed, holy, and victorious—and living in that truth transforms our lives and impacts everyone around us.
Growing Up in Dallas
Some of you know that I grew up right here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and still live just around the corner from here. I still attend the exact same church that my parents started when I was one year old, so Dallas is my home. I went to Duncanville High School and graduated from there, you know, in the 1900s, way back in the day. I was one of the four of us—the mischievous child. I was the one who gave my parents a run for their money. You know how there’s always that one child you’re wondering whether or not they’re going to turn out okay?
I was that one for my parents. I was always getting into something, always being a little mischievous, and one of the most mischievous things I ever did was when I was going into high school at Duncanville. From kindergarten to eighth grade, my siblings and I attended this little private school that was around the corner from our house in Doto. But for freshman year, we transferred over to Duncanville, and I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to take on a little experiment.
The Name Experiment
In my class at the private school, there were about 13 kids. When I transferred to Duncanville High School, I went from a class of 13 to a class of 753! That was not the high school population; that was just the freshman class—753 students! So it was a complete culture shock for me and a great opportunity to experiment. I thought when I transferred to Duncanville, I would give myself a new name. I decided my new nickname would be «DK.» The experiment was that when I went to this new school, I would introduce myself by this new name, just to see if it would catch on.
I had one friend, Nicole, who had grown up in the Duncanville school district, so she already knew all these people. She and I were in the youth group together at OIFF Bible Fellowship Church, our church on the other side of town. So I knew I’d probably be hanging out with Nicole. I let her in on my experiment and said, «Now, Nicole, when we go to school, the first day, first week of school, and you’re introducing me around, do not call me Priscilla. Just introduce me as DK.» She said, «Girl, what?» I said, «It’s just an experiment. I just want to see if it’s going to catch on.»
To make a long story short, for the next four years of my life, everybody called me DK—everyone who was my peer group there at Duncanville: the teachers, the counselors, the principals—everybody. Even people at different high schools, as we connected with them at football games on Friday nights, just thought my name was DK. Very few people, if any at all, even knew that my name was actually Priscilla. To this day, if I run across somebody in the mall or the grocery store, or if somebody comments on social media and says, «Hey, DK, » I know that it’s someone I knew during that season of my life because everybody called me DK.
My parents really didn’t give me a hard time about it; they were a little bit annoyed, you know, when my athletic uniforms were monogrammed with DCK on them instead of Priscilla, but they didn’t say much about it. But it all came to a head one day when I got sick at school. I had a temperature and was in the nurse’s station laying behind a little drape they had drawn there. I remember lying on a cot, and they had to call my mom to come pick me up from school because of my fever. I remember hearing my mom come into the nurse’s station and say to the nurse, „I am here to pick up Priscilla.“ The nurse said, „Who?“ My mom said, „I’m here to pick up Priscilla.“ I heard them going back and forth for just a second when the nurse said, „Well, we have a D.K. here.“ And Mom said, „That’s her! Give me that girl and let me take her home!“
The Mother's Reminder
When I went home, Mom kind of nursed me back to health, and then when I felt better, I will never forget my mother looking me squarely in the eyes and saying, „Now, Priscilla, I have not minded—your father and I have not minded this whole little experiment that you’ve taken on the last few years—but I do want to be clear about something.“ It was my senior year at the time, and she said, „I want to be clear about the fact that in a few months, there’s going to be a ceremony, a graduation. At that ceremony, they’re going to hand you a very important document.“
She said, „Let me be clear. When they hand you that diploma, there better not be a D or a K anywhere on that piece of paper.“ She said to me, „The reason why is because I really don’t care what other people call you. I don’t care how many other people call you that, and I don’t even care, Priscilla, what you call yourself. There’s only one or two—me and your father—who have the right and the authority to give you your name. You are not what other people call you. You are not even what you’ve called yourself. Only the one who created you has the right and authority to identify you.“
Who You Really Are
So for a few minutes this morning, I just came to remind you what your name is. I came to remind you who you are. Listen to me, brothers and sisters, you are not defined by your past. You are not defined by your behaviors. You are not defined by your failures. You are not defined by your struggles. You are not defined by your feelings. You are not defined by your circumstances. You are not defined by the here today, gone tomorrow false ideologies and watered-down philosophies of our current culture. You are who God says you are. It doesn’t matter what other folks have been calling you, and it doesn’t even matter what you’ve chosen to call yourself.
There’s only one who has the authority to identify you, and it’s the one who gave life to you. Others aren’t qualified to name you. Circumstances aren’t powerful enough to define you. Your story may have hurt you, but it does not shape the totality of who you are. You are who God says you are, and He says you’re a chosen race, you’re a royal priesthood, you’re a person who has been redeemed, and chosen, adopted, and qualified. You are not a mistake; you are not an afterthought; you are not a liability. You are a temple of the Holy Spirit of God, and the value He has placed on you means you are enough.
God loves Dallas. Yes, God loves you. He made you in His image, both physically and in your personality. The strengths and the weaknesses—all of it is an expression of the creative genius of Almighty God. When you surrender your whole self fully and completely to Him, He loves and values you enough that He actually takes up residence in you. He makes you His dwelling place, so you become a temple of Almighty God, and that means you’re an overcomer. That’s who you are.
Identity Matters
I don’t know who has lied to you up until this point, but it is important that you and I get our identity in full view. The reason why is because whether or not you walk in victory is directly correlated to what you believe to be true about yourself. You will either live up to, or you will live down to whatever you believe to be true about yourself. So I want to talk to you about your identity. Identity is critical. In fact, it’s one of the major themes that you’ll see all throughout the Old Testament and throughout the New Testament. You see this theme of identity that keeps coming up over and over again—God showing up to get people’s identity recalibrated so that they will begin to live according to and in alignment with what He has said to be true about them.
Israel's Identity Struggle
One of the most notable places we see this in scripture, the most notable relationship where we can see Him recalibrating people’s identity, is with the children of Israel throughout the Old Testament. After 400 years of slavery in Egypt under Pharaoh, they had developed the mindset of living like slaves. So even after ten miraculous plagues and being guided miraculously through the wilderness, those forty years were about their identity in the wilderness because He had freed them from Egypt. Still, it would take forty years of wilderness wanderings to make sure that Egypt was now out of them. They had been freed out of Egypt, but Egypt needed to be detached from them. What good is it to be legally free if you are still living like a slave? What good is it to be free when you are still thinking like, operating like, deciding like, and reacting to other people as if you are not free—making decisions out of scarcity, lack, fear, and intimidation?
So Yahweh spends forty years recalibrating their identity, reminding them, „You are who I say you are. You are not this. You are this. Start acting like this.“ The children of Israel, they come out of wilderness wanderings and into the promised land, and the book of Judges is where you and I are going to meet them today—in Judges chapter 6. If you have your copy of scripture, if you still use an old-school paper Bible like I do, you can flip over to Judges chapter 6, or your iPhone, your iPad, any manner of device will get you there.
The Cycle in Judges
Let me tell you while you’re turning there, the book of Judges is all about the children of Israel being in Canaan. They have already come out of Egypt, and now they’ve already been through the wilderness. They are in the land flowing with milk and honey, but while they are there, idolatry is introduced to the children of Israel. Idolatry is always a threat to your identity. It will always begin to make you question whether or not He is who He says He is and that you are who God says you are. The whole book of Judges is not about the children of Israel completely turning their backs on the one true God; it is about the people of God stationing their worship of idols alongside their worship of the one true God.
It’s this duplicity of the people of God that caused such a decay throughout society in the book of Judges. By the time you get to the last line of the book of Judges, if you were to read it, you would see the last line says, „Everybody was doing what was right in their own eyes.“ If that doesn’t sound like America in the year 2023, I don’t know what does because when your identity is distorted, truth is distorted, and the entire culture decays. They opened themselves up to enemy attack. The book of Judges is them living in the land of promise but still experiencing and exposing themselves to enemy attacks on all sides. They have been ravaged by the Midianites, who have come for seven consecutive years, pillaging their towns, burning down their homes. They’ve had to escape their cities in fear, running in fear from enemies and living on the sides of mountains and in caves to hide from the marauding enemies. Because their identity is not in view, they expose themselves to enemy attack.
Gideon and the Angel of the Lord
But everything is about to change on one day when God comes to remind one person of who they really are. Judges 6:11–12: „Then the angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak tree that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite. His son Gideon was beating out wheat in a wine press in order to save it from the Midianites.“ Verse 12: „And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior.’“ These are our two verses this morning where we’re just going to spend a little time because the angel of the Lord shows up in the national calamity and chaos that is written about all throughout the book of Judges. He shows up in the experience of one man named Gideon to remind him who he really is, to call out of him the behaviors, the actions, the choices that should have been instilled in him because his identity was in clear view. He says to him, „You are a valiant warrior.“
The angel of the Lord shows up for this one purpose—to remind one person who they really are. The whole nation is in decay, but He doesn’t show up on a national level; He doesn’t show up on a communal level; He shows up to one person. That’s how critical this issue of identity was that the angel of the Lord showed up to one individual to remind him about his identity.
Let me tell you why this Sunday morning is so important. Let me tell you why the reason you fought through all that traffic this morning but the Lord still made it to where you could get in this room and that you could sit in these seats. Let me tell you why, teenager, that you were frustrated this morning that your mama made you wake up and come to church. The reason is not so you could just sit in a building on a Sunday morning. It’s because the angel of the Lord, the Hound of Heaven, came looking for you this morning to remind one person— you, brother or sister— to have your spiritual ears wide open to hear God say, „You are who I say you are. Now act like that.“
Not the way you feel; not what has happened to you; not your past behaviors. Don’t align with that. Align your whole self with who I have declared you to be. The angel of the Lord comes to tell one person who he is. The angel of the Lord— anytime you see this phrase, you need to know what’s happening. Scholars call this the Great Presence (capital G, capital P) of Israelite history, because whenever you see the phrase „the angel of the Lord“ in the Old Testament, you need to know this ain’t no regular angel. We’re not talking about Gabriel and Michael and them. The angel of the Lord was the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. Before Jesus put on flesh and came in the New Testament, He was already showing up in the Old Testament. It’s called a theophany—a God appearance.
God Steps Into Ordinary Lives
God Himself would step out of heaven onto the landscape of Earth and would intervene in the regular details of a regular, ordinary life so that He could shift the trajectory, not only of that life but of everything and everybody attached to that life. So the angel of the Lord kept showing up over and over again. If I had time this morning, y’all, we’d spend a whole hour just talking about the angel of the Lord because you need to know that the fact that the God of the universe would step onto the landscape of Earth is never something that we should hear and let it roll off our shoulders as if it’s no big deal, because this is God we’re talking about. The one who, right now, while we’re sitting in this room, is controlling the throes of the entire universe—the one who made sure that the sun rose this morning and is going to hold it in place all day long until it swaps places with the moon later on tonight. This is God we’re talking about—the one who is going to hang every single star in the sky and is going to know every single one of their names tonight and every single one of their numbers. This is God we’re talking аbout: the one who is controlling the throes of galaxies and neighborhoods in galaxies that scientists don’t even yet know exist. He’s the one controlling all of that.
In the midst of all of that, He stopped by on this Sunday morning to come see about you. That’s a big deal—that we serve a God that great who is also that good, that He cares that much about you. He made sure, on the calendar of your life, you were here, and I got to be here on this Sunday morning so that He could move heaven and earth to just whisper to your heart, „I got you.“
The angel of the Lord kept showing up all throughout the Old Testament just like this—for one person on a regular ordinary day just to say, „I got you, ” just to remind them who they were. Genesis chapter 16, there’s a lady named Hagar. Hagar has a past. She’s been misused and abused by the people she was supposed to trust—Abraham and Sarah. Then they discard her, out into the wilderness with her newborn son. The baby’s crying; she has no food for the baby. Her entire future is in jeopardy. She is crying a river of tears that has blurred her vision so that she can barely see what’s in front of her. In the midst of her devastation, her fear, and her concern about her future, the angel of the Lord shows up in Genesis chapter 16 and says to Hagar, „Let me tell you who you are. You are not what they did to you. It happened, but that does not define you. You still are Hagar, who I say you are.“
So maybe you’re like Gideon— that the Midianites, the enemy, the circumstances of your life have closed in on you, and you find yourself sitting in a situation that is a result of the circumstances around you. Or maybe you’re like Hagar, where it’s not your circumstances that have done it to you; it’s other folks that have done it to you. People you were supposed to be able to trust—the folks you were supposed to be able to rely on—have betrayed you, abandoned you, and set you on a path the likes of which you can’t even believe. Whether you’re Gideon or whether you’re Hagar this morning, the angel of the Lord has come looking for you. He can find you wherever you are.
Or maybe you’re not Gideon or Hagar; maybe you’re Moses because, in Exodus chapter 3, he’s sitting in a desert of his own making. He did it to himself. For Moses, it was not that the circumstances did it; it wasn’t really that other folks did it; it’s because he made a choice. He made a decision out of sin and anger. He made a choice that put him into this desert where he is now tending sheep for forty long years. Moses had been raised as the prince of Egypt, so shepherding is a job that is beneath his pay grade and educational level. But while he is in that desert of his own making, one day a bush starts burning. The bush is burning but is not consumed. So he sees something supernatural in the bush. When he stops to see about this bush, he realizes that the Lord is there; the angel of the Lord has shown up in Moses’s circumstances to remind him, „You are not what has happened to you. You are not what you did. You are not your behaviors. You still are Moses, exactly who I say you are.“
The reality is that some of us aren’t Gideon—circumstances didn’t do it to us. Some of us aren’t Hagar—other folks didn’t do it to us. If we had time for a testimony service, most of us would recognize we did it to ourselves. We can look back and realize there’s a choice we made that put us in this desert. There’s a decision we made, a relationship we allowed, a path we walked down. I don’t know about y’all, but there’s a whole season of my life I look back on and don’t even recognize that crazy person back there. Can I get a witness? You look back and realize you can’t believe you made those choices, walked with those people, or allowed that path. You recognize that had it not been for the grace of God, had it not been for the goodness of God delivering us when we were not in our right minds and setting us on a brand-new path, reminding us that we are not what we did—we are who God says we are.
He showed up for Moses, and He shows up for you. He shows up for Hagar, and He shows up for you. He shows up for Gideon, and He says, „Gideon, you’re a valiant warrior.“
Hiding in the Wine Press
Now, the author of Judges 6:11–12 wants you to know exactly what Gideon was doing when the angel of the Lord showed up. It says he’s beating out wheat, but he’s doing it in a wine press. The reason why that is critical is that you need to know where grapes were pressed to make wine and where wheat was threshed to prepare for harvest were two completely different environments. Threshing wheat always took place on the top of a hillside in the open air. The reason they needed open air at the top of a hillside was that when you beat out wheat, it would dislodge this useless nutrient called chaff. They needed the wind to drive the chaff away. You’ll see that figuratively all throughout the Old Testament—the chaff being driven away by the wind.
Wine getting pressed happened in a completely different environment. They didn’t want open air; they needed it to be shaded and damp to make sure it was the right environment for the grapes to produce what they wanted it to produce. That would happen at the bottom of a hillside in a depression on the side of a rock in a shaded, damp environment. These two things happen in completely different dynamics, but we find them overlapping with Gideon. Gideon is doing what should be done up high; he’s doing it down low. The reason he is not threshing wheat on a hilltop, where it would be more convenient and easy and helpful to get that chaff driven away, is because if the wind drove the chaff away, then that chaff, the scent of it, would be delivered right to the Midianites, and the Midianites would know there was a harvest.
So he’s trying, the end of verse 11 says, to save it from the Midianites. He doesn’t want them to know there’s a harvest. So, y’all, he is in the deep oppression of a rock, doing this more time-consuming, tedious, inconvenient job. He’s willing to do it in that environment because he’s hiding. He’s trying to make sure that he hides from these enemies. He’s walking in fear and insecurity, and he’s hiding in this deep depression of a rock—he’s hiding. He’s trying not to be found, and in this position where he’s trying not to be found, the angel of the Lord comes and finds him.
The reason why this is good news is because I need you to know that there are some people in your life—your teenager, your young adult child, your spouse, your parent—and your heart has been broken for them because they’ve been trying not to be found. They’ve been running from the arm of God. You’ve been asking God to bring them into a relationship with Himself, and they’re just running. They’re rebelling. Their heart is hard; they’re stiff-necked. They’re refusing to come into a relationship with Him. I need you to know today that even for your loved ones who are trying not to be found, the angel of the Lord can still come and find them. And aren’t we glad about it—that the Hound of Heaven keeps coming to look for us? Because we’ve all had those seasons in our lives where, honestly, we were trying not to be found. We were trying to avoid the voice of God, avoid the conviction of God, go in a different direction, act like we didn’t feel the poking and the prodding of God’s Spirit in some area of our life. The reality is we have testimony that had it not been for the goodness of God, the Hound of Heaven that would not let us go and kept looking for us, aren’t we grateful for His grace and mercy?
He finds Gideon, and He finds us, even when we’re trying not to be found. He steps into this scenario where Gideon is. Listen, he’s currently operating in fear and insecurity. The whole reason he’s in the wine press is because he’s acting out of fear, insecurity, and intimidation. Even though he’s behaving that way, God steps in and says, „You are not your behavior.“ Somebody needs to hear that this morning: What you did last night doesn’t define you today. You are not what has happened to you. You are not the circumstances that are surrounding your life right now; they are not powerful enough to define you. You still are who God says you are. God shows up to a man who is insecure and operating in fear, and He says, „You’re a valiant warrior.“ He speaks to him according to the truth of his identity, not the current circumstances of his reality. He says, „You are this. Now act like that.“
Speaking Identity to My Sons
I do have three sons, ages 21, 19, and 15. I drive my kids bananas. I think that’s a mark of a good mother—that they ought to be sick of you, because you know you have rules; you have things you want them to incorporate into their lives that they don’t value. Since they were very little, I have said pretty much the same thing to my boys most every day. I make them stand in front of me, and when they were at home (the older two are in college now), I would make them look me in the eye. They would have the nerve to sometimes slump their shoulders over, and sometimes they would look at me, and if they were real bold and brazen, they might actually roll their eyes. „Not today!“ I would say to those boys, „No, no, no! Look at me and listen to me.“ And I would look them squarely in their eyes and say, „You are a man of integrity, honesty, and character. You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. You will put on the full armor of God so that you can stand firm against the schemes of the enemy. You are a leader; you are not a follower. You are the head; you are not the tail. You are above; you are not beneath. The praises of God will always be in your mouth, and you will rise up and be a mighty warrior in the kingdom of God, or I will spank you!“
They would kind of go, „Oh man.“ I still text it to my boys a lot throughout the week. I will text it to them and say, „Say this out loud today.“ I don’t know whether they do or not, but I’m going to text it to them. I’m going to keep feeding it to them. I knew it was getting into them because every now and then, when I would say it to them, I would tell them, „Finish this statement. What’s the rest of this statement?“ They’d respond, „I’m a man of integrity, character, and honesty. I will love the Lord my God with all my heart and all my strength.“ But even with the attitude, what it tells me is that you’re hearing me and it’s getting in you.
The reason why I have made it my business to say this to my boys is not because their behavior always lines up with it; it’s because I’m trying to get them to behave in a way that lines up with their identity. „This is who I say you are, God says you are. Now act like that; think like that; react like that; make decisions like that.“
Can you think of how our lives would be transformed if we started acting not according to the way we feel but according to what God says is true? Can you imagine what relationships we wouldn’t even entertain if we believed what God said to be true about us? Can you imagine how much more we would refuse to do things for the approval of other people? Their applause, or their like, or their comment isn’t actually important to us. That’s inconsequential to us because I don’t need your approval. The scripture says I’m already approved, that I’m already accepted, that I’m already enough, that I’m already valued. I don’t need your applause; God has already applauded for me.
It changes and transforms the entirety of our life where we stop operating just based on the way we feel in the moment and reacting based on that. Instead, we remind ourselves, „This is who I am, so I’m going to rise to that standard and behave like that.“ It will transform your life.
The Ripple Effect of Identity
Not only will it transform your life, but if you read throughout the rest of Judges chapter 6, you will see that immediately after Gideon hears from God that he is a valiant warrior, he immediately goes back home to his father’s house. He goes into this house that he’s been afraid to interact with in previous chapters. He goes back to his father’s home; he grabs all of the idols that were in their home, and he breaks them one by one over his knee, changing the trajectory of idolatry through the course of his entire family.
In fact, the entire family and the entire generational line connected to it is completely transformed because one person gets a hold of their identity. Do you know that there are people attached to you who are waiting for you to get your identity in view? Do you realize that your sons and daughters, your grandsons and granddaughters, our great-grandchildren that we have not even laid eyes on, the trajectory of their lives is attached to us? Gideon getting our identity in view so that we can go home and say, „This is who we were, but this is not who we are anymore, ” that we’re breaking generational curses and shifting the trajectory of our entire family lines because we are going to start living up to the standard of who God says we are.
And then after he transforms his whole family, Gideon goes into battle with what he’s most notable for. This is probably why you know Gideon—because with an army of 300, a little meager army, they go up against 140,000 Midianite soldiers, and they bring home a victory. The entire trajectory of the nation is completely turned around because this one guy has recalibrated his identity. Your family is not the only thing attached to you; there’s a whole community attached to you, y’all. There’s a whole national crisis that we are living in right now that is attached to the people of God rising up and being who God has called us to be. If we would just show up with our full identity in view, who knows how the school district attached to you is going to change? How the work environment attached to you is going to change? How your neighborhood is going to change, your community group is going to change, the city, the state—the whole nation transformed—because God’s people remembered who they were.
Who God Says You Are
So for just a few moments at the close of this message, I thought I’d just take a couple of minutes to remind you, brothers and sisters, who you are. You are a child of God. You have peace with God. The Holy Spirit lives in you. You have access to God’s wisdom. You are helped by God. You are reconciled to God. You are not condemned by God. You are justified by God. You have Christ’s righteousness. You are Christ’s ambassador. You are completely forgiven, and you are completely free. There is therefore no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. You are blameless and beyond reproach. You are the salt of the earth, and you are the light of the world. You are Christ’s friend. You are chosen by Christ to bear fruit. You are a joint heir with Christ, sharing in His inheritance. You are united with the Lord. You are members of Christ’s body. You are hidden in Christ with God. You are a child of light. You are holy, and you share in God’s heavenly calling. You are a member of a chosen race. You are a royal priesthood. You are a holy nation. You are a people for God’s own possession, created to sing the praises of God. You have been born of God, and the evil one can’t even touch you. You’ve been rescued by God. You’ve been made complete in Christ. You have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. You have been given access to great and precious privileges and promises by God. Your needs are met by God. You have been bought with a price. You’ve been adopted into the family of God. You have direct access to God through the Holy Spirit. You cannot be separated from the love of God. You are a citizen of Heaven. You’ve been established, anointed, and sealed by God. You can be confident in this: that the good work He’s started in you, He will bring to completion. You are God’s workmanship. You are seated with Christ in heavenly places, and you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.
In Jesus' mighty name, come on, church, say amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! You are who God says you are; act like that.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, would You help us to get our identity in view? Every lie of the enemy that has tried to convince us otherwise, I pray that You would quiet that voice and that Your voice would be loud in our ears this week. Then, give us the courage and the boldness to behave in a way, to think in a way, to choose and make decisions in a way that aligns with who You say we are. In Jesus' name, amen!