It was my friend Marlene Suarez of CBN Asia who one day asked me a question,    “Michelle, do you know the meaning of your name?”  I honestly have never checked the meaning of my name.  She then said, “your name is like a prophetic utterance to who you could be”.  Marlene pointed out to me, that my name has the name of God in it.  “EL” means God. So I took the liberty of looking at the meaning of my name.  It is of Hebrew decent and was derived from Michael, and it means… “One who resembles God”.

    I thought to myself… Wow, that is powerful!  The gist of that conversation stuck with me.  I have decided on naming my child and future children with an intention of a prophetic blessing over their life. 

      After the knowing the gender of our baby on the fifth month, my husband asked me what should we name our son?  For some reason I was drawn to the name Joshua.  I loved the account of his life in the bible.  He was a young brave warrior, obedient to his leader which happens to be Moses, and he saw things in a different perspective — with a godly pair of eyes.  He finally led the Israelites to the promised land and on the final account about his life it says, “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, and had known all the deeds of the Lord which He had done for Israel.” (Joshua 24:31).  His legacy was a generation that served the Lord even after his death.

    We would want to bring up our son to love and serve God just like Joshua did. We want his name to speak that blessing upon his life. Joshua literally means “God saves”.  It is a powerful reminder of the heart and character of God.

    Of course, we named our son a much longer name — because of the long wait for a child, our first son gets 3 names which may post as  a challenge on his future documents… hehehe…  But we chose these names with the intention to speak a blessing over his life 🙂