He Speaks So Personally

A friend and mentor sent something to me yesterday. He has been wrestling with the silence of God and he had done some reflecting and writing on the subject. It was very interesting for me to read his thoughts on the matter as they were quite different from my own. He even went so far as to record what he thought God was saying to him about the silence and why it was there. I was puzzled at first because the voice he was quoting didn’t sound like God to me. It’s not that what he was recording was unbiblical, or in any way contrary to the revealed nature and character of God. The difference was one of tone and vocabulary.

It was as if my friend tape recorded a conversation with someone we both knew well and then played it back to me and asking me to name the person on the recording, and I was unable to correctly identify him. Something in the intonation or the manner of speaking was unfamiliar, but not inconsistent with what I know about my friend. Then, when I’m told who is on the recording I slap my head and say, “Of course, that’s right, I just couldn’t put my finger on it!”

I am in awe of the way that the God of the universe meets with each of us so personally. His immutable nature is exactly that, unchangeable. He does not turn or change like shifting shadows. He is the Rock, the only unmoved mover, the foundation of all creation. He is the only fixed point in our constantly changing environment. I do not mean to intimate that He is shifting or shifty, that He is tricky or fickle; rather, He is so kind as to meet us where we are and to speak our language, the language of our minds and of our hearts.

When God speaks to me he does it in English. Modern, or perhaps post-modern, American English is the medium through which we communicate with one another. He uses vocabulary and imagery that resonates with my soul. He knows all the formative experiences of my life for He has planned everyone of my days before one of them came into being. He knows how to speak my language; He even uses idioms. He speaks everyone’s language. That’s the beauty of it!

The incarnation was the clearest expression of God’s ability to enter into a particular place in time and space to reveal Himself. He took on the very form of a man, but not the form of every man. He took on a unique form, the form of a first century Jewish carpenter living in Roman occupied Palestine. He spoke Aramaic and probably Greek. He certainly did not speak English, German, Chinese, or Swahili. He entered in to that milieu completely. He became one of them and therefore one of us. He connected with them as a peer, He spoke their language, and in doing so demonstrated his ability to connect directly and personally with everyman in every language.

God still meets with us. He still comes to us speaking the language of our hearts. According to the Bible, God is the creater of all languages. The Bible is the most translated book in history because God is constantly translating heaven to earth and earth to heaven. He is the God who wants to be known, the God of revelation, the God of speech.

So, my mentor and friend hears the voice of God, and even the silence of God, differently than I do. That is as it should be, for God is speaking to him personally and intimately. When God speaks to me, He speaks my language. When God speaks to you, He will speak your language. There is so much beauty and diversity in the way that the unchanging and unchangeable God of the universe interacts with His children. May we ascribe to Him the glory that is rightfully His and to each other the freedom that is our inheritance as His dearly loved children.

The Family of God

The call to follow God has always been a call to community. Since Adam and Eve, God has been calling individuals to Himself. We each individually choose to answer that call, or to reject it, but when we choose to answer His call and to draw near to Him, we are not just answering the call to an individual relationship with God, but we are also answering the call to join the community of God, the family of God.

This image of the Family of God is used repeatedly throughout the scriptures. In the earliest times it was a literal family, the family of Adam and Eve, the family of Noah, the families of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These early families are both literal, historical, families, and also “types” for the broader family of God that would be revealed more fully only much later. These early families demonstrate the unity and the complexity of following God in community. They serve as both encouraging symbols and as illustrations of the problems that come with living in community.

We must resist the temptation to romanticize the family. Living in community has many benefits but it also brings with it many burdens. G. K. Chesterton, in answering those who generally attacked the family as being bad because it is uncongenial, or difficult, replied:

“Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero restaurant, that the family has some of the bracing qualities of the commonwealth. It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The men and women who for, good reasons and bad, revolt against the family are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our younger brother is mischievous like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid like the world; he is old, like the world.”

Chesterton is hitting on a point that is of great value to those of us who are called into the family of God. When we entered into the family of God, it is not as an only child in exclusive relationship to our Father, but rather we were adopted into a family with many brothers and sisters. Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers. We are adopted into a family and we must learn to live with our brothers and sisters in the faith. Chesterton strips away the romantic notion that living in community, in family, will be easy or comfortable. We are wildly divergent in our gifts and temperaments, our likes and dislikes, our callings and our character; and yet, we are called to live and work together.

The process of living in this kind of environment, learning to love one another, to esteem others more highly than ourselves, to serve those whom we may not even like, is a kind of living sacrifice. It requires that we die to ourselves a bit more every day. The beauty of the Cross is that while death is never comfortable, it can be transformational. Death is no longer defeat, but is now the point of redemption. If we are willing to fill up in our own bodies what remains of the sufferings of Christ for His Church, we will find that we are transformed in the process. To live in community is to experience some of the greatest joys available to us on earth, and also to place ourselves in the flaming crucible of transformation. The fires of community both warm our souls and burn away the dross. May we never draw back from all that He wants to do in us and through us in community!