Finding Our Voice

Next week I'll be speaking and ministering at a youth camp with the theme, "Finding Our Voice". I actually suggested the theme a few months ago and it immediately resonated with everyone at that planning session. For me this has been a life long passion because it has to do with far more than the words I speak. It has to do with the prevailing influence, weight and power of who I am.

We all know people whose mouth moves and sounds are emitted from that cavern but no one is interested in spending any energy to actually hear and decipher what was just said. That's because the words are not vitally connected or rooted in any living dynamic. If I say, "war is hell" and you ask me how I know that and my only response is tell you where I found that quote and who originally said it, we might end up having an enlightening conversation but little else is likely to come from it. But if I'm a marine being treated in a military hospital for multiple fresh wounds from an ambush I just survived, and I look up into your eyes and fight to reach for enough air to say those same 3 words, we are going to have an altogether different exchange of thoughts. In fact, those 3 words might be all that is necessary.

In grammar, the concept of voice has to do with the form of a verb showing the connection between the subject and the verb, either as performing (active voice) or receiving (passive voice) the action. "The dog bit the boy" is the active voice because the subject is the dog and the dog is active. "The boy was bitten by the dog" is the passive voice because the subject is the boy and he is on the receiving end of the action. I'm going to strain the analogy for a moment because I hate the word, passive. To find our voice we must learn that all of life is waiting to be lived. We are the subject and we must act or we will be acted upon. I hope the grammar works here because I don't want you to miss the point.

Jesus said that we, His people, are the light of the world. When you enter a room that is pitch black, you don't ask, "Where did all this darkness come from?" do you? You enter the dark room reaching around the corner with the demand, "Where's the light?". If we fall for the notion that our voice is for the purpose of informing the darkness of its varying shades of dark, we are wasting our breath. Our voice IS the light!

The Voice of Jesus calmed storms, forgave unrepentant people, healed sickness, awakened the dead, rebuked religious bigots, raised hopes, loved losers, spoke when silent, silenced ignorance, blessed those who cursed Him, prayed heaven into hell, changed names, called the unqualified, drove demons into pig prisons, opened prisons, lit fires of the heart, whispers peace and trumpets triumph.

Psalm 29 says, "The Voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the glory of God thunders...the Voice of the Lord is powerful, majestic. The Voice of the Lord breaks the cedars...the Voice of the Lord hews out flames of fire. The Voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness...strips the forests bare and in His Temple everything says, 'Glory'." This is the Active Voice. This is the Voice that calls us to be a Voice of equal harmonic beauty, power and true influence.

This boy bites dogs.