Crash the Chatterbox: Hearing God's Voice Above All Others (7 page)

I’ve never forgotten his answer.

He said, “Well, I used to have a tough time with it for sure and still do sometimes. But we had one conversation that changed everything for me. See, most of our communication happens by e-mail. And one time after he had sent me a few e-mails in a row telling me things I needed to fix and things I needed to work on, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I went to him and said, ‘I don’t feel like I can do anything right, man. I don’t feel like you like me. I feel like a failure.’

“And that’s when he explained to me, ‘The problem is, you’re not reading my e-mails right. You’re misrepresenting my
tone
in your mind. Of course I believe in you. Of course I like you. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t have a job. E-mails are tricky. You can’t see my face when you’re reading an e-mail. So here’s what I want you to do. From now on I want you to read any e-mail I send you like I was smiling when I sent it. ’Cause that’s the way I feel about you.’ ”

I wonder how much our lives would change if we started reading God’s Word like He was smiling when He wrote it?

Of course the One who created us believes in us. Of course He likes us. Why else would we be here? Yes, there are things He is working on in us. Yes, our sin is serious and needs to be addressed head-on. No, God is not satisfied to leave us like we are, and sometimes this involves direct confrontation. There are some tough, almost unbearably stark statements in Scripture calling us to repent, to return, and to walk in the ways of God. There are warnings and consequences explained in no uncertain terms. The Bible isn’t a book of butterfly kisses and sweet nothings.

But even God’s correction is meant to convince us of His love.
¹
Contrary to the condemnation and accusations of the chatterbox, which we’ll dismantle more thoroughly in Section 3, even when God calls us out on something we’re doing wrong, His purpose is to raise us up. Never to beat us down.

Everything changes the day you realize that not only does God love you
but He actually likes you too. Not just because He has to. But because He wants to.

The God who made you is constantly smiling over you, and that ought to make you smile like a first grader opening his change purse on grilled cheese day. Furthermore, it ought to empower your perspective in every battle you face. How can you lose when a God who feels this way about you is fighting for you?

There’s a song we sing a lot in our church right now, and it’s incredibly powerful. The part I especially love says,

You can feel tidal waves of confidence swelling within people when we sing that part.

Why does it resonate so much? It’s not that people have never heard or declared that God is the One who reigns forever. Neither is it news to most Christians that we have a friend in Jesus. I believe it’s the connection of those two colossal ideas that rocks us.

When we link a biblical understanding of God’s authority with our personal experience of His intimacy, it melts down the mainframe of the chatterbox.

And that’s exactly what we need, because most of us feel powerless when assaulted by feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. John 10:10 says that the thief comes “to steal and kill and destroy” the life that Jesus died to impart. And since the Enemy doesn’t have the power to snuff out our lives literally, he works from within to steal our sense of victory. Think about it: the chatterbox can’t keep you from winning, because the battle you’re fighting was never yours to win. Therefore, you can’t lose. The Enemy can’t keep you from being who God says you are. But he
can
blind you from
realizing
who God says you are.

If he can’t keep you from winning, he will do everything in his power to keep you from walking in full awareness of your victory.

That’s why the collision of the confession of
who God is
(the One who reigns forever!) and the confession of
who I am in Him
(He is a friend of
mine
!) registers so effectively in our souls.

As we were singing that song in church recently, I turned around as unobtrusively as I possibly could from the front row and studied the faces of a few of the people who were singing it. Some of them I knew nothing about, but the expressions on their faces or the tears in their eyes gave me a few hints about their stories. I let my imagination fill in the blanks. I often do that during worship before I preach. I imagine what the people we’re ministering to might be going through. It helps me connect more personally with the urgency of the truth we’re presenting.

On this particular day I saw one woman, probably in her twenties, who wasn’t lifting her hands or singing, like so many people around her were. But she didn’t look angry. I’d say she looked equal parts broken and hopeful as she scanned the people around her. The emotional and tearful expression on her face seemed to say,
Is this really true? I hope it’s true. These people sure seem to believe it. Is this God really a friend of
mine
?

I wondered about the heaviness of accusation she might have carried with her into church that morning. What did she know too well about herself—perhaps a hidden part of her past or a present struggle no one else knew about—that made it difficult for her to sing out the words that were obviously touching her heart? (Maybe she just didn’t like to sing. I understand that’s a possibility, but I like my version better.)

Two rows past the young lady was someone I knew more about. He was also crying, which was unusual for his temperament but made sense, given his situation. This man (I’ll call him Bill) has been through hell over the last two years. His mom is very sick, and he’s paying a lot of her bills. He’s glad to do it, but he’s running out of resources. He has a commission-based job that was great until the economy tanked. Now it’s unreliable. I know because he told me in a letter that he feels embarrassed by this.

“The Enemy keeps telling me I’m a failure,” he wrote. “I know it’s not true. I know what the Bible says, that I’m a conqueror, but it’s like the proof keeps
stacking up, and I can’t refute it. How many times can I fail before I have to admit, you know what, maybe I actually
am
a failure?”

At this moment, though, Bill had his eyes closed, and I knew it might be the only moment all week when the chatterbox was drowned out by the voices of the thousands of other believers who were singing along with him: “The One who reigns forever, He
is
a friend of mine.”

I turned around to grab my microphone because there was only one more chorus before I was up to preach. As I turned, I saw a little hand waving right in front of my face, and I heard my two-year-old daughter singing loudly enough to get my attention over the music of the electric guitars and kick drum: “DA ONE WHOO WAYNS FOW EBWA …, HE ID A FWEND OB MINE!”

Abbey was wailing like she understood every word better than the lady in her twenties, better than Bill, better than the preacher. And although I didn’t get superemotional in that moment, because I didn’t have much time, I put my right hand on her face and prayed,
God, help her always know this, deep down, that You are the most powerful person she’ll ever encounter—and You love her more than she’ll ever understand
.

I understand that the culture my daughter is growing up in will wage a war against her security in Christ. The chatterbox will start blaring at an early age through media messages, through images online and in print, telling her she’s deficient. It will tell her things about her body that will make her dissatisfied with her shape and substance. It will tell her things about her personality that will make it difficult for her to see God’s fingerprints on her constitution and character.

But I plan to teach my daughter how to keep singing that refrain. Or, from the looks of things, she might be teaching me.

The reality that stared at me in the face of each of those people that day was the imminence of God’s friendship married with the wonder of hope in His power.

Combine those two, and you have the most powerful force in the universe, more powerful than any words the chatterbox will ever speak to you, about you, or over you.

This is the force of God’s
favor
.

Living within the framework of God’s favor reorients you to a new reality.

I knew a woman in college whom I would describe as “over saved,” as one comedian put it. Everything you asked her turned into something spiritual. You’d say, “Hey, Mary, I like that shirt,” and she’d say, “The Lord told me to wear purple today to remind me that I am royalty.” I did not make up that example. Queen Mary said those exact words.

I must admit, I got pretty adept at avoiding her, other than the general Southern courtesies, such as “Hey, Mary, how are you?”

Of course, Mary couldn’t answer me by saying she was fine or great. Instead, she’d reply, “I’m blessed and highly favored.” Every single time I asked Mary how she was, she replied with the precision of an army recruit, “Blessed and highly favored, praise the Lord.”

Now, I’m not suggesting we mimic Mary and make
blessed and highly favored
our auto response for every salutation. But there’s something cool about the way she described herself, the way she saw herself.

Favored
.

The concept of God’s favor has been sliced and diced and served up in so many different ways that it’s hard to use it without certain images coming to mind. Images of preachers telling you that if you pray for God’s favor, you’ll get convenient parking spots and incredible deals on Black Friday, and you’ll never be sick, sad, or stuck in traffic.

While I have no doubt about (and no objection to) God’s ability to bless us in those ways, these are not the most important facets of God’s favor. God’s favor is not just a force to make our lives more
convenient
. It’s a supernatural reality that enables us to fulfill God’s purpose.

I’ll prove this to you from the life of another, much more famous Mary. Remember in the Christmas story when the angel came to the Virgin Mary and told her she would have a child and He would be the Son of God? Do you remember what the angel said to Mary in his greeting?

Perhaps this is where Crazy Mary got her line. From Mother Mary herself. But look at Mary’s response. It’s unexpected.

On the surface this is confusing. You’d think that if a messenger from God told you that you were highly favored, you’d be ecstatic. Getting an announcement from an angel that you’re highly favored is kind of like finding out that you’re in the audience for Oprah’s Favorite Things. Or that you’ll be featured on
A Wedding Story
. (Do they still make that show?)

In this case, though, Mary’s initial response to the announcement of God’s favor was
fear
. And as the story unfolds, we see that she had sufficient reason to be afraid.

We have to take a moment to appreciate the irony and absurdity of this moment. An angel appears and prophesies a pregnancy that wasn’t the result of relations between a man and a woman and that will prove to be
the
event in world history: the incarnation of the Son of God.

Think of the kinds of doubts and rejection Mary would face over the next nine months and beyond. As her pregnancy progressed, she’d be forced to answer impossible questions from understandably suspicious people. She’d feel the parade of judgmental stares of those who had their own explanations of her situation.
Oh yeah, that’s Mary. She’s the girl that “God got pregnant.”

They would have laughed in her face and behind her back and done and said much worse than what I feel comfortable printing on these pages.

She’d question herself, surely.
Was that really an angel? Have I completely lost it? And how in the world am I going to raise this child?

This
is what you call favor? And the angel has the nerve to suggest Mary has nothing to be afraid of?

What kinds of insecurities would the chatterbox try to amplify in the mind and heart of the young, vulnerable, and now disreputable Mary?

We get a glimpse of Mary’s very human, initially hesitant reception of the news in verse 34:

After explaining in very limited detail how the process would unfold and assuring Mary that the Holy Spirit was able to accomplish even what seemed to be impossible from a human perspective, the angel punctuated his pep talk with this promise:

The angel’s response certainly didn’t eliminate all of Mary’s trepidation, but somehow Mary found it within herself to reply,

That verse—Luke 1:38—has been my wife’s favorite Bible verse since long before we got married. I always thought it was a strange Bible verse to claim as your
favorite
. (I’m not saying it’s not a good verse, just that, if you’re going to pick an
absolute favorite
?)

But the more I considered the context, the more I appreciated the subtle beauty of the verse. For one thing, notice the sequence. It reinforces a truth we learned earlier. The reason Mary was able to receive the angel’s instruction to carry out the activity that was assigned to her was her unshakable understanding of her identity in relationship to her God.

Read it again:

So I am prepared for whatever comes to me. Whatever criticism, whatever chatter, whatever lies are spoken about me, whatever internal agony I’m sure to face …