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.