Hello, my name is Don.

I’m here to tell you there are many ways God can free us from the past.

One day, while attending a prayer conference with several of my fellow church members, God chose to free me from some of the insecurities I have lived with all my life. The following is the testimony of how He used a time of prayer for others to change me, to heal me and to give me life more abundant. The instrument God used to free me was a soft, huggable world globe.

I was sitting in the sanctuary next to some friends waiting for service to start. One of those friends was a lady I call Miss Mary. She had what looked like a ball and had given it to another lady with instructions to pray. I didn’t understand what it was all about so I asked Mary what the ball was and she told me it was a Globall and that it was used to pray for children, families and nations.

When my other friend finished her prayer, Miss Mary handed me the Globall and said, “Give the world a hug from Jesus and pray for everyone in the world with your same name.” So, I took the Globall, hugged it to my chest and began to pray for all the Dons across the world. As I finished, I went to hand the Globall back to Miss Mary and that is when God spoke to me.

 He told me I wasn’t done praying yet.

Because God, our Father, knows us very intimately, He knows our deepest hurts and deepest fears. He knows the things the enemy uses to take away our comfort, our joy, and our peace. This is where my testimony gets VERY personal because this is where God got VERY personal in my life.

See, I wasn’t done praying for all the people with my same name because, even though I have been called Don all my life by family and friends, that’s not my real name. My name at birth was Luther.

My parents divorced within a year of my birth and I never remember a time when I was called Luther. From a very early age I was called Don and that is the name by which I have always been known. In fourteen years of education, Luther has never been the graduate, only Don. My first Social Security card was in the name of Don. Yet, my driver’s license had to be issued in the name on my birth certificate – Luther.

This led to deep-seated feelings of inferiority and insecurities. I felt as if I had no identity or worth all those years as I was growing up. I came to despise the name Luther and never wanted to be called Luther but, it is my name.

I remember one night after I’d been saved for a couple of years. I was sitting on my bed and asking God how would I even know if he called me because I didn’t know what name he would use to do so. His loving response was, “I call you what everybody else calls you.” Yet, I still despised having two identities. I despised having two names and it made me feel like an inferior person.

But finally, the right vessel was put into my hands! It would be through this soft, little prayer globe, this Globall that my God would teach me a lesson about myself. He was going to show me I didn’t have to be ashamed about who I was. And this is how he did it:

When God stopped me from handing the Globall back to Miss Mary and said that I wasn’t finished praying, somehow I knew exactly what He meant.

I have two names and there was another name for which I needed to pray – Luther. So, I prayed for all the Luthers across the globe It was the first time in my life I wasn’t ashamed to have two names!

God, our Father, gave me some healing that night for which I had longed for over 40 years.