Voice

I always wonder what people think the first time they hear my voice.

“Wow, I didn’t expect you to be that nasally.”

“Hmm, surprisingly gentle, yet manly.”

“Josh Groban?!”

Sure one of those is probably more likely than the other two (hint: not the Josh Groban reference) but nonetheless, it is true that different voices associate different things. For example, when most people I know hear the voice of Morgan Freeman, they associate it with God in the movie Bruce Almighty. Likewise, when people hear Fran Drescher speak, they associate it with the odd, yet somehow irresistible, urge to hit your head against the nearest wall.

Voices are important. The way you speak to people informs them of the way you think and feel about them. I remember when my girlfriend said that she liked the way her name sounded when I said it, “it sounds like you’re taking care of it.”

In the Bible, Jesus was frequently speaking. He spoke the world into creation in Genesis, and spoke Truth into the people he interacted with throughout the gospels. As the old hymn goes, “there is power in the name of Jesus,” and you know what, I think we can agree there was power in his voice as well.

As image-bearers of God, we speak things into being as well. It may not be as visually fantastic as inventing the cosmos or making a blind man see. But I think can be just as fantastic in it’s consequences. We speak things into life daily, good and bad. Working for Young Life, I hang out with high schoolers a lot. Recently, I had the chance to tell one of the young men I’m friends with that he was worth far more than what the world said he was. The son of a prostitute and a neglectful father, his whole life he had been told that he was a mistake. I got to sit next to him on a park bench and tell him that he had intrinsic value that couldn’t be erased because of who his parents were, or what they had done. I didn’t create an animal or a tree when I spoke. But what I did create was a sense of hope in a heart that was previously hopeless.

God has given us all the ability to speak things into being. The question is, whose lives are you speaking into, and what are you saying?