05 What is Your Name? (Mark 5:1-20)

When Jesus steps onto the shore in Mark 5:1–20, he walks into a nightmare landscape—tombs, darkness, screaming, self-destruction—and asks one piercing question: “What is your name?” In this episode, we explore how that question exposes the real enemy within us, how Jesus confronts evil that no one else can tame, and how his authority not only sets a man free but gives him a new identity. 

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• Why the Bible insists that demons and spiritual evil are real, even in a skeptical, “naturalistic” age
• How the Gerasene demoniac’s life among the tombs paints a vivid picture of isolation, shame, and self-destruction we often recognize in ourselves
• The military language of “legion” and what it reveals about the scale and structure of the enemy Jesus confronts
• What Jesus is really asking when he says, “What is your name?”—a question about identity, allegiance, and what dark realities remain hidden inside
• How sins and struggles we try to manage—lust, addiction, jealousy, bitterness—operate like a legion within, and why no “chain” we forge can finally hold them
• Why Jesus allows the demons to enter the herd of pigs, and how their plunge into the sea becomes a public, visible sign that evil has truly been driven out
• How this story reframes the “real enemy,” not as Rome, politics, or our circumstances, but the deeper rebellion against God in the human heart
• The townspeople’s fearful request for Jesus to leave—and his quiet response of leaving them a restored witness instead of forcing himself on them
• The hope that in Christ, our true name is not “unclean,” “out of control,” or “too far gone,” but “redeemed, called by name, and mine”

After listening, you’ll be invited to face Jesus’ question for yourself: Who are you, really—and who has the right to name you? You’ll see more clearly how the gospel addresses not just the storms around you but the storms within, and how Christ’s authority reaches to the very places you feel most ashamed, afraid, or out of control. And you’ll be encouraged to trust that there is no enemy—internal or external—beyond his power to defeat, and no life so shattered he cannot clothe, restore, and send as a living testimony to his mercy. 

Series: Questions Jesus Asked

Start Strong: A New Believer’s Guide to Christianity is available now wherever books are sold.