
My wife is a big fan of the band Big Daddy Weave. While they’re not exactly my cup of tea, as a writer I love a great lyric, and their song “The Only Name” certainly qualifies as that. The song begins with the following words:
“Yours will be/The only name that matters to me/ The Only One Whose favor I seek/The only name that matters to me“
The song is a huge hit, and thousands upon thousands of people are singing it all over the world. While attending a different concert recently, I looked out over the huge crowd of Christians gathered together singing in one voice. I thought of the Big Daddy Weave lyric and wondered, what if we all actually meant the words of that song?
What if the name of Jesus was truly the only name that mattered to us? Money, fame, gadgets, prestige, reputation, houses, cars, neighborhoods, and everything else would cease to have any relevance. Nothing the world tries to convince us we need would hold any allure. All the striving to succeed would stop. All the pretense and posturing would suddenly seem as ridiculous as it actually is. Nothing would matter anymore except for the name of Jesus.
What if we stop seeking the favor of others? No longer would we care what the neighbors think, what our friends think, or even what our families think. We would only be concerned with what Jesus thinks about us. Our entire identity would be wrapped up in Him. If we failed a test, had a bad hair day, messed up the presentation at work, or fell flat on our face in front of the girl we were trying to impress, none of it would mean anything. We could shrug off criticism, laugh off ridicule, and ignore the negative thoughts that creep into our heads. As long as we were pleasing Jesus, that’s all that would matter.
This is what discipleship is all about. When we come to the point of surrendering everything we have and all that we are to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, He will indeed be the only thing that matters to us. Anything short of that is just playing at religion, pretending to be something we’re not. As long as any other name on earth matters, be it someone or something, we will never be able to live the lives we were created to live.
It’s not enough to just say the words; we have to live the message. There’s an old saying I used to hear growing up in church that said, “If Jesus isn’t Lord of all, He isn’t Lord at all”. While it still sounds a little hokey and trite to me all these years later, there is great truth in that statement. A more modern rendition might be, “If Jesus isn’t the only name that matters to you, then His name doesn’t matter to you at all.” As we look at our lives, can we honestly say to God that, “Yours will be the only name that matters to me”?