by James Webb
Words have power. Words do things. When a marriage takes place, there are certain words that need to be said. “I now pronounce you man and wife” is just words, but these words change people. They bring about an actual change.
For someone who likes words, I seem to spend a lot of my time not able to find the right ones.
Many of my days are spent searching for perfect words, and then trying to arrange them in the perfect order. There are plenty of moments where I can’t even seem to find adequate words, let alone perfect ones. Read more
Some of you may remember that about three years ago, Imogen wrote God a letter, the primary outcome of which seemed to be my scarring my daughter for life – or so I had thought. One day, about a year afterwards, she announced that she wanted to write to God again. It turned out that actually receiving a reply seemed to be a factor in her wanting to write a second letter. It ended up similar in content to the first one, primarily concerned with Space Hoppers it seemed. This caused me a little discouragement – I had hoped for more theological growth over the the prior twelve months (When I was four years old I was already reading Calvin’s Institutes – in the original French) but you can’t have everything.
Then it was my turn to freak out a little. What had I started? Now I would have to write a reply, like last time. I wasn’t sure where to go with it. Imogen is our fifth child, and pretty much the only one I think I haven’t managed to break so far, but if I went around pretending to be God all the time then her odds weren’t great. In the end I sat down and thought, “What do I think God would want to say to Imogen at this moment?” and it all came quite easily after that.
It doesn’t matter how clever we are, or aren’t. How eloquent and well-read. How persuasive. None of that matters, not really. We will never be more influential or powerful in our words than when we are doing nothing more than giving a voice to what the Holy Spirit is already whispering to somebody’s heart.
“What should I say?” is a decent question.
“What do I think God would want to say to this person at this moment?” is a better one.
Sometimes I’ll talk to someone about how things are going, and they’ll say something like:
“When she was out walking the dog, Sheila noticed that the family a couple of doors down was selling their car. So, we bought it for a good price. It turned out to be really convenient.” Read more
