Jacob spent the night before the most frightening day of his life alone by a river. Twenty years earlier he had cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright and his blessing, and now Esau was coming to meet him with four hundred men. That night, “a man wrestled with him until daybreak” (Genesis 32:24). When the man couldn’t overpower him, he dislocated Jacob’s hip with a touch. Jacob still wouldn’t let go: “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
Then the man asked him a strange question: “What is your name?” (32:27).
It wasn’t a request for information. Jacob’s name had followed him all his life. He was born “with his hand clutching Esau’s heel” (25:26), and the name sounded like it: heel-grabber. When he stole Esau’s blessing, Esau spat the name back at him: “‘Jacob’ is the right name for him! He has tripped me up two times!” (27:36). To answer the man’s question, Jacob had to say out loud the name that described the worst of him.
“No longer will your name be Jacob,” the man told him, “but Israel, because you have fought with God and with men and have prevailed” (32:28). Jacob walked away from that river with a new name and a limp. “The sun rose over him as he crossed over Penuel, but he was limping because of his hip” (32:31). The name told him who God said he was. The limp reminded him how he’d been shaped.
So the question is:
Who does God say you are, and what has He been refining you into?
Opening Prayer (Say this aloud!)
Father, You’re the only one with the right to name me. I lay down every name the world, the enemy and my own failures have given me. Speak to me. Tell me who You say I am, and show me what You’ve been refining me into through every season of my life. I’m listening. In Jesus’ name, amen.
God names His people, and the names He gives often point to what He created them to do. That’s the claim this section defends.
Kingdom Essentials Session 11 laid the foundation: the identity every believer shares in Christ. You belong to God; you’re adopted, credited righteous, and seated with Christ. That identity is the same for every believer, and nothing in this session replaces it. Step 19 asks a narrower question: is there a particular name God speaks over you?
Scripture’s renamings suggest there often is, and they’re rarely just labels. They’re assignments. “No longer will your name be Abram. Instead, your name will be Abraham because I will make you the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5). The new name described what God was going to do through him. When Jesus first met Simon, He said, “You are Simon, the son of John. You will be called Cephas” (John 1:42), which means rock. Later Jesus explained the name: “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). The name was a job description, given before Simon had done anything to earn it.
Isaiah promised the same kind of renaming to God’s people after the exile: “You will be called by a new name that the Lord himself will give you… You will no longer be called, ‘Abandoned,’ and your land will no longer be called ‘Desolate.’ Indeed, you will be called ‘My Delight is in Her’” (Isaiah 62:2, 4). And Jesus Himself promises a new name to every believer who overcomes:
“To the one who conquers, I will give him some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and on that stone will be written a new (καινόν) name that no one can understand except the one who receives it.”
Word Study
καινός kainos G2537
“new” · Revelation 2:17
Range. New. Greek has two common words for new, and they aren’t the same. Neos (G3501) is new in time: young, recent. Kainos is new in kind. Thayer defines it as “new, i.e. as respects form; recently made, fresh, recent, unused, unworn (opposed to παλαιός old, antiquated),” and “as respects substance; of a new kind; unprecedented, novel, uncommon, unheard of.” Strong’s puts the difference simply: kainos is new “especially in freshness,” while neos is new “with respect to age.” It occurs forty-two times in the New Testament.
The sense here. A name that has never been given before: not a recycled label, but one fitted to the person who receives it. It’s the same word Paul uses when he says that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), and the word God uses at the end of the Bible: “Look! I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5).
Why it carries the argument. The name God gives isn’t a better version of your old one. It’s new in kind, as new as the new creation you already are in Christ. And notice who understands it: “no one … except the one who receives it.” It’s personal. That’s why Step 19 asks you to listen for it yourself rather than borrow one from a list. It’s also why you don’t need anyone else to understand it before you believe it.
Source. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament; Strong’s Concordance via Bible Hub.
What we do flows out of who we are. A name from God is a declaration of who you are, and that gives clarity about what you’re for. That’s why Step 19 comes at the end of the Shaping section, just before your mission statement. What God calls you is often the clearest clue to what He created you to do.
“God insists on being the one who shapes our identity over all other influences. We are not who we think we are, nor are we who other people say we are. We are who God says we are. And His opinion is the [only] one that matters.”
Chris Tiegreen · Author and editor · The One Year Hearing His Voice Devotional, 2014
Illustration
In August 2015 I attended an encounter where I was encouraged to listen to the Holy Spirit for a new name. The first two names I heard were Beloved and Liberator. At a November 2015 event, I heard a new name: Herald. What’s absolutely riveting is that at the same event, my son heard the name Messenger for himself. In February 2016 my daughter heard the name Beloved for herself. And then in May 2016, my future son-in-law heard the name Warrior for himself, while I received the name Shepherd.
It wasn’t until later that year that I shared my names with my family for the first time. The symmetry God had orchestrated between the identity of a father and his children was mind-boggling: a Herald and a Messenger, heard at the same event; a Beloved father and a Beloved daughter; a Shepherd and a Warrior.
And looking back, none of those names contradicted the rest of my story. Each one described something God had already been doing in my life, or something He was preparing me to step into. They gave me words for what He had been building all along.
In an actual group that worked through these steps, the name heard most often was Beloved: three of the nine people who answered Step 19 wrote it down. That’s worth pausing on. Beloved is true of every believer, and yet God spoke it to each of them as if it were theirs alone, which it is. A shared truth can still be a personal word. But most of the same people heard something else alongside it, and those other names tended to point toward function. One woman heard Graceful, Beloved and Comforter, and when she wrote her Shaping statement a few days later, “comforter” was in it. Another, who had served for years as an advocate and teacher, had first been given a name tied to her own middle name, which means reborn; the second time she listened, she heard communicator. A man whose life had kept him on the move heard Nomad and Traveler.
Two of those nine heard their names during a class exercise, listening alongside others, as Session 2 suggested. And one woman wrote, after several days, “I’ve thought about this for a few days and honestly don’t know.” Her coach’s answer was simple: “I just don’t want you to believe He doesn’t have something for you. Keep listening!”
Pause & Reflect
What names have other people, or your own failures, given you? Which of them has God never said about you?
This objection comes from careful believers, and it deserves a full hearing. Anyone can claim God gave them a name. It sounds humble, but it can’t be checked, and it’s easy to hear exactly what you want: “Apostle,” “Prophet,” “General.” Revelation 2:17 is about the reward of those who overcome, given at the end, not a name you receive in a prayer exercise. And Scripture already tells me who I am in Christ. Why go looking for anything more?
Much of that should be conceded. Revelation 2:17 is a promise to “the one who conquers,” and its full fulfillment is future. People do hear what they want to hear, and a “name from God” can become a platform for ego. And Scripture’s shared identity for every believer, the one Essentials 11 taught, is the foundation. Nothing personal can replace it.
Here’s where I land, and why. I believe God still speaks personally to His children, as He did to Abram, Jacob and Simon, and that a name He speaks now is a foretaste of the one He’ll give in full. But I also believe such a name has to be tested like any other word you hear. Here are the tests I’d apply:
Two people in an actual group that worked through these steps showed what holding a name carefully looks like. One woman heard Hannah, then went and looked it up: “it’s a Hebrew name meaning grace, favor…” One man heard three names. He looked up the meanings of the first two, and of the third, Great, he wrote only: “I need further understanding on this.” That’s the right posture for a name you’re not sure of yet: write it down, don’t build on it, and keep asking.
Where this stays unresolved. Nobody knows for certain what the “white stone” of Revelation 2:17 was. The Greek word, psēphos, means a small pebble, and it was used for voting (Acts 26:10) and for admission tokens; commentators have suggested a juror’s vote of acquittal, a ticket to a feast, and other options. Scripture also doesn’t say whether the new name is given only at the end or can be glimpsed now. What’s clear is that the name is God’s gift, personal to the one who receives it, and fitted to a new creation.
Everything you wrote in the Shaping section, your milestones, influencers, fields, victories, failures and promises, was God’s refining work. Step 20 asks you to name what it produced.
Zechariah describes God refining a remnant of His people:
“Then I will bring the remaining third into the fire; I will refine (וּצְרַפְתִּים) them like silver is refined and will test them like gold is tested. They will call on my name and I will answer; I will say, ‘These are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’”
Zechariah 13:9
Word Study
צָרַף ṣārap H6884
“refine” · Zechariah 13:9
Range. To smelt, refine or test. Strong’s defines it as “to fuse (metal), i.e. refine (literally or figuratively).” Brown-Driver-Briggs gives four senses: to smelt or refine metal; to test people, as Gideon’s warriors were tested at the water (Judges 7:4); to test and prove true, as God’s words are “refined” (Psalm 12:6; Proverbs 30:5); and, as a participle, a smelter or refiner, a goldsmith. It occurs thirty-three times in the Hebrew Bible.
The sense here. Metal-refining: heating silver until the impurities separate and can be skimmed away. In Zechariah 13:9 the verb appears twice in a row: literally, “I will refine them as one refines silver.”
Why it carries the argument. Refining isn’t punishment. It’s what a smith does to metal he intends to use. Malachi pictures the Lord at work over the fire; the Hebrew says He “will sit as one refining and purifying silver” (Malachi 3:3, where the NET has “act like a refiner”). A refiner doesn’t walk away from the furnace. And look at the result in Zechariah: not a destroyed people but a closer one: “They will call on my name and I will answer.” The fire in your story, including the hardest parts of Session 10, was never meant to consume you. It was meant to make you pure enough to use, and near enough to hear.
Source. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon; Strong’s Concordance via Bible Hub.
Peter, who knew something about fire, wrote that trials “show the proven character of your faith, which is much more valuable than gold – gold that is tested by fire, even though it is passing away” (1 Peter 1:7). The refining isn’t finished; it won’t be until the day you see Him. But it has produced something already, and Step 20 asks you to name it.
J. Robert Clinton, summing up the early phases of a leader’s development, quoted Warren Wiersbe:
“God makes a worker; then he uses that worker to make a work.”
Warren W. Wiersbe, as quoted by J. Robert Clinton · The Making of a Leader, 1988
The Shaping section has been about the making of the worker. Clinton observed that over a lifetime, God’s work in a person and His work through that person spiral closer together, until the result is “a fusion of being and doing.” Your Shaping statement names the worker God has been making.
In the picture you’ve been drawing since Session 1, your design supplied the colors and your heart their intensity. Your shaping is the lines: the path your life has actually taken, dot by dot, including the stray lines God has worked in. Step 20 asks you to step back and describe the shape those lines have made.
Pause & Reflect
Looking back over Steps 13–18, what’s the one thing the fire has burned away most, and the one thing it has left shining?
Step 20 asks you to gather Steps 13–19 into one statement, the third of the course’s three summary statements. It works the same way your Design and Affinity statements did.
Your Design statement described what you’re built to do. Your Affinity statement named for whom and where. Your Shaping statement names what your life has prepared you for: what the milestones, influencers, fields, victories, failures, promises and name have produced in you. It usually begins, “I’ve been shaped to…”
If you’ve made it this far, you’ve done something most people don’t. In an actual group that worked through these steps, twenty people began; eight wrote a Shaping statement. The strongest of those statements were short and drew a straight line from the fire to the assignment. “I have been grown and pruned in the knowledge of Kingdom identity and the choice to reject the world’s labels,” one man wrote, “that I might encourage and support those around me in pain and bondage.” One woman wrote that what God had brought her through had “resulted in a particular love for the underdog.” The most common miss was a list: one sentence for each step, in order, with nothing to show what they added up to. The second most common was a summary written by an AI and kept unchanged. Their coach’s reply to one of those is worth remembering: “It’s your journey. Not mine (nor AI’s!).”
Consider This
If you’ve kept your Purpose Journal electronically, an AI tool (Claude, ChatGPT or similar) can help you see the pattern across the Shaping section. Copy your answers to Steps 13–19 and paste them in after this prompt:
“I’m working through a discipleship course on discovering my God-given purpose. Below are my answers to seven steps about how God has shaped me: my most formative experiences, the people who influenced me most, the fields where I carry spiritual authority, my victories, my trials and failures, the promises God has spoken over me, and the name I sense He has given me. Please (1) point out themes, lessons and kinds of preparation that repeat across the seven answers; (2) note anything that seems to point in a different direction; and (3) offer three different drafts of a Shaping statement of 50 words or less, each beginning ‘I’ve been shaped to…’. Describe what my life has prepared me for, not my abilities or my passions, which I’ve described separately. Don’t flatter me. If the evidence for something is thin, say so.”
As before, write your own draft first, and treat what comes back as a mirror, not a witness. Take one draft, or none, and rewrite it until it sounds like you. If a sentence still says “you” or “your,” it isn’t yours yet.
Pause & Reflect
If someone who’d read your whole Shaping section summed up your life in one sentence, what do you think they’d say you’ve been prepared for?
Everything above has been explanation. God names His people, and the names He gives often point to what He created them to do: Abraham, a father of nations; Peter, a rock. The name He promises is kainos, new in kind, personal to the one who receives it, and it should be tested like any other word you hear. And every season in your Shaping section was the refiner’s fire: not punishment, but the work of a Refiner who sits by the furnace until the silver is pure enough to use.
Now you listen for your name, and then you name your shaping.
Find a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted for twenty minutes. Read Isaiah 62:2–4 and Revelation 2:17 slowly. Then pray, out loud if you can: Holy Spirit, what name do You speak over me?
Wait. Note the very first word or words that come to mind, and write them down without editing them. If nothing comes, that’s fine; write “nothing yet,” and try again another day. If something comes, ask a second question: Does this resonate with what I’ve been sensing my purpose to be? Then set it aside and test it tomorrow, using the tests in this session’s What About.
Discovery Steps · Steps 19 and 20
Use the Listening Rhythm for each step: ask to be searched; do the work; sit with it; test it with the witnesses; sleep on it.
Step 19 · My Identity
The prompt. What name or names has God spoken over you?
What to do. Start with The Experience. Write down every word that has surfaced, and any names others have spoken over you in prayer (look back at your Step 18 promises). Then test each one: Does it agree with the identity every believer shares in Christ? Does it explain your Steps 13–18? Does it humble you? Does your witness recognize it? For each name that passes, write one sentence on what it tells you about your purpose.
What to produce. One to three names you sense God has spoken over you, each with a sentence on how it passed the tests and what it tells you about your purpose. If nothing has come yet, write that honestly, and write down the name you know is true of every believer that means the most to you right now.
Surface answer: “Child of God.” (Wonderfully true of every believer, and worth holding onto. But Step 19 asks whether God has said something particular to you.) A real list from an actual group shows the same thing more gently: “Beloved · Victorious warrior · Daughter · Treasure · Chosen · Precious in His sight.” Every word is true, and most of them are true of every believer. If one stands out from the rest, like Victorious warrior here, ask whether that’s the particular one.
Deep answer: “‘Builder.’ It came the first morning I prayed The Experience, and it hasn’t left. It explains a lot: my milestones are nearly all things I started from nothing, including a youth program and my business. My wife laughed when I told her, because she’s called me that for years. What it tells me about my purpose: I’m meant to start things, not just maintain them.”
Worked examples.
You’re done when …
Time: at least two days: one to listen, and at least one to test.
Step 20 · My Shaping
The prompt. Summarize your responses to Steps 13–19 into a cohesive statement of your Shaping.
What to do. Reread Steps 13–19 in one sitting. Underline every lesson, kind of preparation or theme that shows up in more than one step. Ask: What has my life prepared me for? Draft three versions of a statement beginning “I’ve been shaped to…”. If you like, use the AI prompt in Consider This above, then rewrite in your own words. Leave out your abilities and your passions; your Design and Affinity statements already cover them. Read your best draft to your witness and ask, “Does my life back this up?”
What to produce. One statement, 50 words or less, beginning “I’ve been shaped to…”.
Surface answer: “I’ve been shaped by many experiences to serve God.” (True of everyone who’s lived long enough to read this.) The other common surface answer is a list: one sentence for each of Steps 13–19, in order. That’s a table of contents, not a summary. Ask what the seven sentences add up to.
Deep answer: “I’ve been shaped to walk with people through loss, because I’ve survived my own, and to lead quietly, because the people who shaped me most led that way. God has taught me that failure isn’t final, and I’ve been prepared to say so to people who believe it is.”
Worked examples.
You’re done when …
Time: at least two days. This is the last of the three summary statements. The next session puts all three together.
Big Ideas
Kingdom Principle
You don’t name yourself. God names you, and He refines you to fit the name.
Closing Prayer (Say this aloud!)
Father, thank You for every name You’ve spoken over me, and for the name You’ll give me in full one day. I let go of every old label that isn’t Yours. Thank You for the fire, even the parts I wouldn’t have chosen, because You stayed at the furnace the whole time. Keep refining me until I’m the person You’ve named. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Go Deeper
Accessible
Chris Tiegreen, The One Year Hearing His Voice Devotional (2014). Daily readings on recognizing God’s voice, including what He says about who you are.
Substantial
Warren W. Wiersbe, On Being a Servant of God (1993). Short chapters on God’s making of the worker before the work, from the writer Clinton quotes in this session.
Academic
G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, New International Greek Testament Commentary (1999). A thorough treatment of Revelation 2:17’s white stone and new name, weighing the main interpretations.
Leading This Session
Two kinds of people will struggle with Step 19: those who are skeptical of hearing anything from God, and those who hear a grand title too quickly. Honor the first group by reading the What About together and reminding them that “nothing yet” is an honest answer. Serve the second group with the tests, especially “Does it humble you?” The most powerful moment is often when someone shares a name and the group recognizes it before the person finishes explaining. Keep old labels private unless someone volunteers them. Group questions: What name have you let define you that God never gave you? and What has your life prepared you for? In an actual group that worked through these steps, two of the people who heard names did so during the class exercise, so give the group time to listen together in silence before anyone shares. Expect Beloved to come up often; honor it as a personal word, then ask whether God said anything alongside it. At Step 20, the most common misses were a sentence-per-step list and an unedited AI summary. By this point in that group, fewer than half were still going, so reach out to anyone who has dropped away and invite them back to the step where they stopped.
If you have questions or comments about this content, or about your personal situation, email us at feedback@thedisciplespath.com.
Next: Session 12, Your Purpose, brings your Design, Affinity and Shaping statements together into one sentence: your mission statement, in fifty words or less.
Session 11 · Kingdom Purpose
Your Name
Who does God say you are, and what has He been refining you into?
The Name God Gives
God names His people, and the names point to their assignment. The new name is new in kind, and personal.
The Refiner’s Fire
Your whole story has been refining, by a Refiner who stays at the furnace.
Zechariah 13:9 Malachi 3:3
Naming Your Shaping
What has your life prepared you for? Name the worker God has been making.
So · Now
You don’t name yourself. God names you, and He refines you to fit the name.
Listen for your name, then complete Step 19 (your identity) and Step 20 (your Shaping statement).
Discovery Steps · Steps 19 and 20
Kingdom Principle
You don’t name yourself. God names you, and He refines you to fit the name.