“You are a connector, Sarah.”

The prophetic words she spoke over me didn’t feel weird at the time perhaps because were sitting at a fast food fish taco restaurant. It just didn’t seem like the “prophesy” kind of place.

I know the word “prophecy” is supercharged. It can make people click away {right away} because of the bad, pentecostal taste it might leave in your mouth. It’s right up there with “speaking in tongues” and getting “slain in the spirit.” And for me, yes, I tend to stray away from the words that bring up bad charismatic memories in my spiritual past.

But the words she spoke to me WERE prophetic.

A small group of us sat around a table and spoke words and phrases to each other that were meant to be encouraging. When it got to me, a few friends said some things to me that I never had thought about myself before.

Really? You think? I don’t see myself that way.

When I drove home that night, I thought of all the ways that I might connect people, how I might have found ways to connect good people to other good people and I couldn’t think of very many. But yet Dawn saw something in me and said something TO me that turned out to be important.

In the weeks that followed, unintentionally, I tried to live up to the moniker “connector” that she had given me. I tried thinking of people who I could connect together, introduce to one another so that they, together, might accomplish a greater good. The result of Dawn’s words to me, even if they were only in small part true at the time, was that I began to live up to what she had called me.

And I began to connect people.

The names we give one another are important and they are prophetic.

If we say to a friend, I see grace and love in you, there is a strong likelihood that she will live up to that. And the same is true of our children and our spouses.

You are smart.

You are someone who is wanted.

You are a strong man who loves his family.

You are full of joy.

Really? You think? I never saw myself that way.

And maybe our friends and kids will begin to live up to those things that we see in them, even if we only see them in small part.

I believe the same is true with our words that bleed pain and negativity.

You are worthless.

You never succeed.

You are weak and I can never count on you.

These are also words that people grow into. They are prophetic and are even more difficult to climb out from underneath than perhaps the good things we might say. {You know all too well, don’t you? Someone maybe has spoken those words to you.}

We as people have the power to change the course of lives just by speaking good and true words. We can find a good name for someone and use it.We can help draw out the beauty in a person by simply noticing it, even if it is faint and small.

Maybe we can take today to find the small good in someone, to take a risk and speak something kind and true to them that might be “prophetic” in their life.

Have you been given “prophetic” names? Has someone noticed something in you that was helpful to your growth? Have you been affected by negative names others have given you?