Out and About 12 Listening for the Language of God

[HKHaugan]

When you are out and about what voices do you hear talking?  What are they talking about?  Are they talking to someone else?  Are they talking to you?  What language are they speaking?  When you are in a place that surrounds you with earth, sky, wind, sun, mountains, streams and the animals that wander their domain, is there a language resonating in their movement?  When you see the stars at night, a full moon that shines from the edge of day to the morning glow, the massive distant Milky Way and peer into an endless beyond, is there a language emanating from their depths?  Then in the intensity of a laboratory search you peer into microscope and plumb the mysteries of what can’t be seen with the naked eye and you marvel at the fact that it can be observed at all, are you sensing there is purpose and meaning being spoken and you find that in reality it is you who is being questioned?  Did you feel poverty in verbal expression, the experiences indescribable and response beyond grasp? You beheld the birth of a child, saw children at play, found charm and joy in their growth and the knowing wisdom in the smile of elders that all in all is so expressive that to try and verbalize what you saw would lessen their impact?  Have you considered being in the presence of others and the far broader apprehension of personness they exude that exceeds what is seen yet grasped in unexplainably?

 

Consider the brokenness and harshness of living in a fallen, hostile world with its crime and violence and meaningless barbarity speaking a language that is dark, foreboding and evil.  Even aloneness, isolation, alienation beg condensed verbalization.  

 

In fact all of what we can see both small and large, close and distant, the unseen, the invisible, place before you a kind of final question only you can answer.  Did you understand the larger language that was being spoken in all of these and did that language raise a question or questions in your mind, your heart and your spirit?

 

Musicians, composers, poets, writers, painters, actors, architects, psychologist, sociologists, economists, lawyers, doctors, educators and on and on speak languages attempting to communicate something that comes from within to make sense of the existence we know in mind, heart, spirit and body.  

 

In the midst of all this there is an ultimate language, a final and complete language that is verbal but carries in it the deeper non-verbal insight, the ‘now-I-see’ essence behind everything.  It is first a written mind attending language that falls upon the ear and contacts the understanding of the mind.  But it is, secondly, a language directed at the heart and spirit of every person within.  It attaches itself in the belief, trust and faith doors in every person.  It is the language of Scripture that brings us that inner language of the Spirit of God.  It was that language that brought the disciples to ask Jesus, “Why do you tell stories?"   He replied, "You've been given insight into God's kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn't been given to them. Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it. I don't want Isaiah's forecast repeated all over again: 

   Your ears are open but you don't hear a thing. 
      Your eyes are awake but you don't see a thing. 
   The people are blockheads! 
   They stick their fingers in their ears 
      so they won't have to listen; 
   They screw their eyes shut
      so they won't have to look, 
      so they won't have to deal with me face-to-face 
      and let me heal them.

 "But you have God-blessed eyes—eyes that see! And God-blessed ears—ears that hear! A lot of people, prophets and humble believers among them, would have given anything to see what you are seeing, to hear what you are hearing, but never had the chance (Mt.13:10-17 The Message).”

This is extremely important for us in these times of world unrest.  We have been led out from institutions that have begun to follow voices that do not speak in the language of spiritual authority from the Word of God.  They speak in spiritually foreign languages that are not of the Holy Spirit.  Paul has told us in 1Cor.13 that there are two languages, those of men and of angels.  We have the written language of men in Scripture anointed by God to open to us the language of His angels, which are given in Creation to illustrate His power, His plan, His presence and His glory. 

 

Consider the words of Ps.18, “Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.

 There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.

 He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet.

 And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.

 He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.

 At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed, hail stones and coals of fire.

 The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals of fire.

 Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings, and discomfited them.

 Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils (vs.7-15).”

 

Through Jesus everything came into being (Jn.1:3) and He was ordained by the Father to bring us to one language in Him, His Word with its verbal and spiritual depth entwined.  The disciples’ question?  He is the language.  He is the Good Shepherd and He resonates without and within.  When you hear the outer language listen for the touch of its inner personal meaning.  “When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice (Jn.10:4-5).”