The Series: Our daily lives are stuffed with words— often simple entertainments, frequently confusing mirrors, and sometimes even bullets. But the intention of God is for language to actually yield life. We’re told that creation itself was a product of divine speech. When God says, “LIGHTS!”, worlds and dimensions shift. A sound bite from God is a total game changer. God wants to give us HIS language, and so re-wire us to live on a spiritual plane that impacts every other dimension of life. Do you want to live and produce life all around you? Then learn God’s language. To this end, our series for 2018 is called “The Language of God: Words of Life”.
A Summary of Talk #1: An Intro to Words & the Word "Father"
The symbolic character of language.
Words are just symbols of real things. They are not the things themselves. As hungry as you may be, the word "tangerine" cannot itself be peeled, eaten and squished. You need to get your hands on the real thing. And since humanity's collective knowledge of stuff has blown through the roof, the average person's words are increasingly distanced from their real experience. We are Wikipedians.
The weakening of our words.
One consequence of this avalanche of information is that our words carry less authority and power; and, we get used to powerless speaking. This can even become the drowsy norm for Christians in spiritual matters. But God wants to buck that trend. He is fully invested and present in what He says, and his words release power. Same for us.
So, during February's gathering, we didn't just listen to the speaker yammer on, and on and on. WE practiced getting back to speaking what we know. We simply practiced telling a personal story, because we have tremendous authority and power there! And every month we'll continue practicing this "power of personal".
Who’s YO' Daddy?
Then we took a steady look at perhaps the most revolutionary word Jesus taught us to use: "Father". Jesus' introduction of that word to the religious vocab in Matthew 6 was like going to work and having your boss tell you, "Hey Robbie, how about from now on you just call me, Daddy?" Could sound totally weird and potentially inappropriate, yeah? Sometimes even our sacred relationships have been warped by predators so we are on guard against intimacy. But there IS still One who sets the gold standard for "Father" and he is no predator but trustworthy. Jesus invites us to call God "Dad" even as he did on earth. But some of us prefer to think of him as "Boss". Others have gotten numb to the edgy nature of "Father-God" because it's become a religious throwaway phrase. And maybe it's because we've stopped really encountering God in that way.
So we discussed how we're ACTUALLY doing experiencing God as Dad, looking to Jesus' teaching for details. This "Father": 1. is rock solid present with us, available to us in secret without hype or fanfare;
2. totally gets us with a minimum of words because he's perfectly familiar with us; and
3. grants us highly coveted positions of honor and intimacy because the right to call someone "Daddy" belongs ONLY to, well, that guy's kids.
3. grants us highly coveted positions of honor and intimacy because the right to call someone "Daddy" belongs ONLY to, well, that guy's kids.
The picture is of enviable security. May we name God, speaking “Father, Dad, Baba, Papi”, out of THIS living relationship.