The Loudest Voices in My Life
I saw a parody news headline recently that made me smile:
Man who looks at nothing but the news and social media
wonders why he is depressed
It’s true, isn’t it?
The daily news is depressing enough, with its endless parade of pandemic updates, reports of racial unrest, and political trash-talking. The news about our nation is discouraging enough, but add in the mindless, vicious debates swirling around social media, and soon we’re all in a dark place.
I heard about a man who put a post-it on his bathroom mirror so he’d see it every day:
“What are the loudest voices in my life?”
Good question. And I’ve been thinking about that question for several days.
What are those loud voices that are shaping our outlook and expectations and self-image?
There are voices we listen to far too much and give them far more attention than they deserve.
· We hear the voices (mostly in advertising and social media) that tell us we’ll never be ____ enough. And those voices have so many cruel adjectives to slide into that blank: never slender enough, never smart enough, never confident enough… As if we needed reminders that we are broken people living in a broken world, all of us incomplete projects.
· We hear the voices telling us that the entire exercise of faith – not just my own faith but the faith we all hold together – it’s all a hopeless illusion. And if I look at my own failures and weaknesses combined with all the failures and weaknesses of all of the people of God around me, it does look hopeless. And if the advance of the Kingdom of God depended on me and people like me, God’s Kingdom would have failed a long time ago.
· And in it all we all hear the voice of the “accuser of the brethren” (Rev 12:9-10) reminding us of our many failures, telling us our faith is a sham. He’s right that even though we stand complete in Christ we are still sinners who sin. And he’s also right that if my security had to rest on my performance, my “faith” would be sheer hypocrisy.
So sure, those voices are there. And they are loud. And (here’s the worst part) they are partly right.
And if I let those voices shape my worldview, I am in utter despair.
When we let the combined voices of our ruined conscience, our spiritual foe, and our fallen world have the final say in our minds, we are living in a hell of our own making. It’s true that we are living in a broken world, and it’s true we are broken people who continue to contribute to our world’s dysfunction every day.
And if this is all we hear and all we know and all we think about, there is very little reason for hope.
But this is why we call the Story of Jesus the “Gospel.”
Our English word “Gospel” is actually a contraction for “good-spiel,” or “good story.” It is the word used in ancient times for the good news a herald would bring from a distant battlefield announcing the triumph of the king and his soon return.
When that announcement was made to the home city of the king, it changed nothing and it changed everything.
On the one hand, the announcement changed nothing. People would continue to go about their business in the shops, the marketplace, the fields. Petty rivalries would continue to simmer, gossip would continue to circulate. Life would go on after the announcement much as it had before.
On the other hand, the “gospel,” the announcement of the king’s victory, meant that his mission was complete and he was successful and he was on his way home, and now everything had changed.
Whatever doubts there may have been about whether the king would triumph – whether he was able to defeat the enemy or whether the enemy, having destroyed the king and his army, would show up at the city gates; whether the king would return in triumph or his lifeless body would be borne on the shoulders of his men – all those doubts were finally put to rest with the herald’s announcement, the “gospel,” the good-story of the king’s victory.
So, yes, we are in the middle of a sad and desperate situation. And, yes, as we look around us and into our own hearts, there is plenty of reason for us to despair.
But we have heard the Gospel.
Christ has faced our enemy, and he has conquered over sin and death.
And although that doesn’t change our immediate situation, we know that the Gospel changes everything.
Which brings us back to our question: What are the loudest voices in our lives?
More to the point, what are the voices we want to hear most clearly?
As I think about the spiritual struggles in my own life and in the lives of God’s people, I keep returning to this simple two-fold strategy, words that I have posted in my office:
Let the Spirit and the Word do the work.
I let the Spirit and Word do the heavy lifting in my spiritual life by seeing to it that God’s Spirit has many opportunities to use God’s Word to speak into my life.
This obviously means that I submit to the discipline of weekly worship with the people of God where I can hear the Word of God proclaimed.
But this also means that I engage with God’s Word with others, in a small group or class, where we together bend our heads over the Scripture to see what it says, what it means, how we can obey it more fully.
And it means that I engage with God’s Word offline, when I am by myself. I read or hear or study the Scripture; and I reflect, I journal, I mull over, I talk with God about what I’ve read.
In other words, I make it my aim to let God’s Word speak loudly and often into my life. I remind myself of the Gospel – I remind myself that my own sorrows and sins and the sorrows and sins of my people are not the last word… that Jesus has conquered not only sin but also death and that he will return in glory.
Let’s make it our aim to create the space and depth in our lives and habits for God’s Word – the Gospel – to be the loudest voice in our lives. Let’s often speak the Gospel to ourselves and to one another so that God’s Spirit can create and sustain in us a hope that will thrive in the darkness of these present times.
Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor
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