This is why I call Him Yeshua instead of his popular name "Jesus Christ"

My name is Joshua.  
Some folks know me as JoshM.  
And this is the truth of why I speak the name Yeshua instead of Jesus Christ.

I do not say this to divide.  
I do not say this to correct anyone.  
I say it because this is the path the Most High walked me through, barefoot and trembling, until I could stand again.

I grew up hearing the name Jesus used in ways that broke me.  
Not by him, never by him,  
but by people who carried his name like a weapon instead of a blessing.

Jesus was shouted at me in anger.  
Jesus was used to shame me, to silence me, to control me.  
Jesus was the name invoked by those who hurt me, betrayed me, and tried to crush the spirit inside me.

So when I say I flinch at that name, I am not flinching at the Son of the Most High.  
I am flinching at the hands that misused him.

But the Most High is merciful.  
He led me back to the one who healed the broken,  
not through the name that was used to wound me,  
but through the name his mother whispered over him as a child.

Yeshua.

The name Miryam/Maryam, (The Virgin Mary) would have spoken in her own tongue.  
The name a Jewish mother in Nazareth would have called her son when she held him close.  
The name that belongs to the soil he walked on, the prayers he prayed, the God he worshiped.

I did not choose that name to be different.  
I chose it because it felt like coming home.

I know him as Jesus, because that is how many of my Christian brothers and sisters met him.  
And I honor that.  
I use that name when I speak with them, because I want to meet them where they are, not where I stand.

But I understand him as Yeshua.

A Jewish teacher.  
A son of the Most High in the same way Abraham was,  
in the same way Ishmael and Isaac were,  
in the same way Jacob, David, and Muhammad were,  
servants, prophets, men who bowed low before the God of Abraham.

Yeshua read from the Tanakh.  
He prayed with his forehead to the ground.  
He worshiped the One God,  
Allah, Elohim, El Elyon, the Most High,  
the same God who heard Hagar in the desert,  
the same God who wrestled with Jacob,  
the same God who spoke to Moses from the fire.

When I say Yeshua, I am not rejecting Jesus.  
I am rejecting the Empire that tried to rename him.
I am rejecting the very name Pontius Pilate call him, as he nailed him to the cross. 
I am rejecting the violence that tried to claim him.  
I am rejecting the chains that were wrapped around his image and handed to me as faith.

I am choosing the man who knelt.  
The man who healed.  
The man who loved the least.  
The man who prayed to the God of Abraham with tears in his eyes.

I am choosing the name that lets me love him without reopening old wounds.

So this is my testimony:

I call him Yeshua because that name saved me when the name Jesus was used to break me.  
I call him Yeshua because that is the name his mother knew.  
I call him Yeshua because that is the name that leads me back to the Most High.  
And I call him Yeshua because in that name I finally found peace.

Peace be upon you all
💚Joshua, aka JoshM

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