As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham (Gen 17,4-5)

A change in social status is always clearly visible when someone's name is changed. A wife takes on her husband's surname, people change their names when they want to cut themselves off from their past completely, start a new life, or fully integrate into a new nation. In a negative sense, a person was denied his name if his status was to be downgraded to that of a mere object, as in the days of slavery or in concentration camps.

God announces (in connection with his fatherhood) that Abram will henceforth have a changed name: "A-bra-ham." What does this mean? The Hebrew vowel "ha" inserted into his name characterizes the breath - the breath of God, the breath of life by which God created and animated man. Not only does Abram receive life for himself, but he becomes its source for generations and nations to come. This is despite the fact that his body is already dead to fatherhood. God can turn death into life.

This experience of Abram shows important principles of God's dealings with man. First, that God's dealings with the world are connected with the people (nation) who are born through the supernatural expansion of His life. They are here, in a broken world, holding the message of God. They are not of natural birth, they are signified by the supernatural birth that occurred when death was overcome by life. The gospel message was therefore from the beginning accompanied by the breakthrough of heavenly life into our corrupt world. We see clearly in Scripture how, with Jesus and the apostles, it was accompanied by healing and liberation, a stream of new life that had the power to restore the corrupt and the old. It was not just a mechanical proclamation (communication) of truth. The accompanying miracles were not an end in themselves, kind of a show which was to attract the crowds. It was a stream of supernatural divine life that touched the hearers if they stretched out their hands of faith to Jesus, as the woman with the issue of blood did.

And further, Abram's acceptance of the new life, so well expressed in his new name, was connected to his new level of relationship with God. Abram had to rise higher in his faith than he had ever been (he had never believed in the quickening of his body before, but now it was necessary). And then, at that height, he reached the fulfillment of the promise. It is not enough, therefore, to search the Scriptures for some technique to achieve miracles. The flow of power is the flow of life, and the measure of it is a matter of the heights to which one has ascended. Thus, we experience most of God's workings in the moments when we surrender to God, enter a new path, come to a decision, see God in a new way. On this new height we gain a new status in God's eyes and experience a new portion of life, a new victory.

It is no coincidence that, as with Abram, a new name is attached to it:

He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. (Rev 3,12)