Our Guest: Linda Znachko
Linda Znachko is the founder of He Knows Your Name ministry and author of the nationally recognized and award winning book, He Knows Your Name, How One Abandoned Baby Inspired Me to Say YES to God. He Knows Your Name Ministry strives to ensure that every child receives a name in life and dignity and honor in death.
Founded in 2009, He Knows Your Name is rooted in the conviction that every life is sacred to God, and that babies are worthy-whether they took a breath or not. Linda has been called, not through her credentials, but God’s equipping, to be an advocate for life, strangely enough, at the grave.
She believes we have ALL been qualified by God to promote and protect life. That walking in our identity is foundational to everything else. After generations of a culture of death, we are living in a time where it is critical to value life. When we place value on life we get to the root of all cultural issues.
Linda partners with the organization “Safe Haven Baby Boxes” and has spent the last 8 years raising awareness and educating others about the Safe Haven Law and the Safe Haven Baby Box (SHBB) program.
She is a popular speaker at conferences and retreats and has been interviewed by numerous talk shows, news stations, and magazines.
Linda and her high school sweetheart, husband Steve, launched a Foundation, funding ministries around the globe. Steve and Linda attend Antioch Church in Indianapolis where they raised their 4 children. One of Linda’s greatest joys is being called “Honey” by her grandchildren.
Linda and Steve adopted their 5th child, Abigail, in 2020. Abigail lived 1 week in the NICU before going to heaven.
Key Thoughts and Scriptures:
Psalm 139:13 NIV For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Jeremiah 1:5 NIV “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
1 Peter 2:9 NIV But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Ephesians 2:10 NIV For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
- Even as a little girl, Linda had a longing to be near Jesus. Yet she felt she couldn’t find Him.
- As an adult, she heard the gospel for the first time. She felt like she came alive because that’s what she’d been waiting to hear her whole life.
- Linda learned that reading the Bible wasn’t just for Sundays.
- She wanted every single thing she did to have eternal value.
- When you immerse yourself in the Word of God, your outlook is transformed.
Linda realized this gospel is for everyone.
- The best way to disciple your kids is to walk your faith out honestly.
- Discipleship starts early and it’s really easy. It’s by modeling to your children what you believe and what’s important to you.
- Every family needs to belong to a church and be involved in the community because we need to know who our people are.
- Linda struggled with fear of man and being insecure. When she saw it in her kids, she pointed it out in herself.
- Then she went to the Word of God and showed them how God’s Word was building confidence in her to live intentionally for Him rather than for herself.
- You have to say no to things in order to say yes to God.
- “Every single decision I make about my children, I need to run through the filter of prayer to ask God. Because God still speaks and He wants to tell us how to raise our children.”
- Our children can hear from God. There’s no junior Holy Spirit here.
- God will bring families into oneness.
John 14:16-17 NKJV And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
John 15:4 NKJV Abide in Me, and I in you…
- The covenant of marriage and oneness is so important to God that He will build your faith separately and together and as a family through all your moments.
Finances can be such an area of tension in families, but early on Linda and her husband established a philosophy of generosity.
- In order to give, you have to have the money to give.
- “We obeyed before we had the eyes to see what God was doing.”
- Even when Linda didn’t grasp what God was revealing to her, she could still be confident that He was always with her.
- She realized the weight of knowing that once you learn something, you become responsible for it.
- We are not supposed to do it all. But we all have an assignment with our name on it.
- Every child deserves to be buried and have a beautiful celebration of life.
- “What organization? It’s just me. And the Lord was like, it’s us, and we’re doing this.”
- God taught Linda how to speak legacy over each baby that she buried. And as she’s done that, God has given her new assignments that actually help fulfill the legacies that the Lord has spoken over these children.
- No life is in vain.
- Amelia means ‘defender’.
- Our names are on purpose.
Isaiah 45:4-6 NIV …I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor…
- Our legacy and our purpose is rooted in our names.
- Everybody’s looking for answers and God has the answers. And when we’re able to present God’s answers to the world, they take notice.
- God has been taken out of schools and churches and monuments are being removed from parks. But the only place that it is still sacred and okay to have a Bible is at the grave for a funeral.
- Every life matters and life begins at the point of conception.
- When you give worth, you receive worth. And when you give dignity and honor, you receive dignity and honor.
When we do what God has called us to do and we show the world His compassion and love, they’re hungry for it.
- Most people want to be invited into the purposes and plans that God has for them because they want to live on purpose too.
- God is a God of promises and He keeps His promises.
Revelation 19:10 NKJV ….Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
- “If I live my life worshiping Him and sharing the testimony of Jesus, the results are up to Him and not me. So I can live free and just do what God calls me to do and let Him do the rest. And that really lightens the burden.”
- Focusing on who God is takes us from where we are, gets our eyes off our circumstances, and puts our focus on Him.
Esther’s Story
- Esther modeled for Linda what it’s like to be a woman in our generation who is being called to save something.
- Like Esther, we can have that boldness before the throne of grace with Jesus and our access has been granted.
Isaiah 6:5-7 NIV “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
- Isaiah knew he wasn’t worthy to represent God in and of himself.
- Satan will heap all kinds of thoughts on us about our unworthiness. But when the seraphim of God touched Isaiah, God made him clean and changed his identity from unworthy to worthy.
Isaiah 6:8-9 NIV Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”…
- We each have the opportunity to encounter God and receive a new identity.
Hebrews 3:15 NIV …“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…
James 1:27 NLT Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.
1 Chronicles 22:11 NIV “Now, my son, the Lord be with you, and may you have success and build the house of the Lord your God, as he said you would.
Links:
- He Knows Your Name
- Safe Haven Baby Boxes
- Safe Haven Baby Boxes Crisis Line: Call or Text 1-866-99BABY1
- Indiana Right To Life
Books:
- He Knows Your Name, How One Abandoned Baby Inspired Me to Say YES to God by Linda Znachko
- Pray with Purpose, Live with Passion by Debbie Williams
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