Yay, you're here. I'm Lisa Whittle, and welcome to Jesus Over Everything, affectionately known as Joe, a short practical podcast where we will not be perfect, we will be honest, and we will talk a lot about Jesus along the way. Here we go, week five of six weeks in the Joe's shopping fast.

I have to tell you, even though this is technically a series, every week God has had something

to say to me. I hope that's been the case for you as well. Today's topic, consecration.

What does it mean to be consecrated to God? And why is this an important part of the six weeks process?

Well, let's talk about it.

You may not know this, but my full given name is not Lisa.

It is Elizabeth.

And another fun fact is that it is Elizabeth

spelled with an S rather than a Z. I've always sort of love my name. It's a family name,

and I'm so thankful I don't have a name I was mad at my mother for which I know can sometimes

be the case. When we were naming our own kids, I really thought through every

single thing I could about ways they could potentially hate their names, and I tried to avoid that.

Sometimes that happens, though. But the name Elizabeth means consecrated to God. I have to tell you

that growing up, though I liked my name, I didn't understand the meaning of my name.

So it was the one and only thing about my name that I actually didn't like. I don't know if it

was big for you at all when you were growing up, finding out sort of what your name meant.

But in our family, at least name meanings were big. And it seemed like my friends also thought it was a big deal to find

out what their names meant. And they all had names or it seemed like they had names that meant

cool things like cheerful or beautiful or some kind of word that a six year old could wrap their

brain around to understand what it meant and to also know enough to know that I wanted

my name to mean something like that too. Consocrated to God felt stuffy and formal and honestly

way too intense for someone who was six years old and didn't really understand what it meant.

...