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1 Powlison InvitationToSpeakUp JBC29 3
1 Powlison InvitationToSpeakUp JBC29 3
1 Powlison InvitationToSpeakUp JBC29 3
by DAVID POWLISON
In the psalms, relationship with God is happening out loud. More than 95%
of the psalms express or invite audible words. Most are spoken directly to
God. Quite often psalms speak to other people, inviting them to join in. And
sometimes a psalm even speaks of the “voice” of the inanimate creation. So when
we read, we hear what is written, because so much of it is happening out loud.
I cry out to you.
Hear the sound of my voice.
With my song I give thanks.
Shout for joy.
Incline your ear to me, and hear my words.
My tongue will sing aloud.
Open my lips.
Consider my groaning.
Let the sea roar…. The trees of the forest sing for joy.
I will call on him as long as I live.
I entreat your favor with all my heart.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
I will tell what he has done for me.
Hallelujah!
Prayer is a verbal interaction. In the mere handful of psalms that have no obvious
verbal cue, a psalm might speak about human destinies in relation to God (e.g.,
Ps 1), or God himself might be the one speaking (e.g., Ps 110). Our audible
David Powlison (MDiv, PhD) is the executive director of CCEF and the senior editor of the Journal of
Biblical Counseling.
AN INVITATION TO SPEAK UP! | POWLISON 3
meant to become so interiorized that we lose the words of direct speech. Close
the door, take a walk, get in the car—and speak up. Of course, in group contexts
throughout the Bible and in public gatherings, God’s people naturally pray
and sing aloud, just as they hear the Bible aloud. We naturally do the same in
corporate worship, when we join in the Lord’s prayer, or in small-group prayer.
The standard practice for both public and private prayer is to speak so as to
be heard by the Person with whom you are talking. Prayer is verbal because it is
relational. Prayer per se is not a psychological experience. It is not contemplative
immersion in an inner silence beyond words. It is an honest verbal conversation
about things that matter, talking with someone you know, need and love.
I’ve known many people (myself included) whose relationship with God was
significantly transformed as they learned to speak up with their Father. Previously,
prayer easily fizzled out amid the internal buzz of self-talk, distractions, worries
and responsibilities. The very things we most need God to deliver us from hijack
our attempts to seek the God we need. It is easy for prayer to become a kind of
muttering to oneself, becoming a bucket list of requests, with little connection to
who the Lord is and what he is up to. It is easy to slide into thinking of prayer as
the evoking of certain religious feelings, or a set of seemingly spiritual thoughts,
or a vague sense of comfort, awe and dependency on a higher power. It is easy for
prayer to meander into vague pieties, and to become virtually indistinguishable
from thoughts. Sometimes it becomes indistinguishable from anxieties and
obsessions! Sometimes prayer is confused with the act of stopping to ponder
quietly and collect yourself. Sometimes prayer becomes a superstitious rabbit’s
foot, a ritual to keep bad things away and to ensure good things.
Then there are the teachings that call for “centering prayer” or “the prayer
of silence” or “contemplative prayer” or “listening prayer,” or the notion that
God is most truly known in experiences of inner silence. There is the repetition
of mantras, even using biblical words as incantations, attempting to bypass
consciousness, seeking to induce a trance state or mystical experience. The Bible
never teaches or models prayer either as inner silence or as mantra or as an
altered state of consciousness. That’s important to notice. On the surface, such
teachings align with Buddhist and Hindu conceptions. They are psychological
techniques designed to evoke an “oceanic experience,” feelings of oneness and
peace. They don’t involve a conversation between named parties who have
something important to say to each other. The gods of silence and incantation
have no name, no personality, no authority, no stated will, make no promises,
and do not act on the stage of history. Such private spirituality can produce
inner ecstasies and inner peacefulness (I experienced that firsthand as a budding
Hindu in the years before coming to Christian faith). But such spirituality does
AN INVITATION TO SPEAK UP! | POWLISON 5
not create interpersonal relationships—with God and with others. The mystic,
inner silence does not traffic in interpersonal love, loyalty, need, mercy, honesty,
tears, just anger, forgiveness, anguish, purpose, and trust. It is a super-spirituality,
beyond words.
Jesus and Scripture speak and act in sharp contrast. The Word in person
and in print expresses a humanness that walks on the ground and talks out loud.
Jesus gives a richer joy and a richer peace than the unnamed gods of inner silence,
inner ecstasy, and inner tranquility. The contemplative tradition tends toward
an elite, strenuous, privatized spirituality that is impossible for garden-variety
people. But Jesus speaks with pointed immediacy to the weak, the addicted,
the outcast, the immoral, the disillusioned, the embittered, the remorseful, the
hurting. And he brings elites—powerful, rich, educated, spiritually refined, self-
confident—down to earth.
God also reminds us to be quiet. Be still. Slow down. Stop. Take time to
reflect. Ponder. But the purpose is not to learn a technique for accessing an
inner realm of silence where we transcend the sense of self and experience a
god-beyond-words. The true God quiets us so we notice him, the God-who-
speaks-words. When we notice him, we notice what’s going on around us; we
notice what’s going on inside us. So we become more honest. This true God is
profoundly and essentially verbal, not silent: “God said... and it was so.... In the
beginning was the Word... and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”
So we listen to him. We take the time to hear his words of grace and truth. We
consider Jesus. And we pay attention to what’s going on in our lives, seeing the
world and ourselves in truer colors.
Then we can pray more intelligently and more candidly. We can think
straight, and feel honestly, and choose well. There is great benefit in turning off
the noise machines, the chatter, the music, the crowd noise, the busy, busy, busy,
talk, talk, talk—whether it’s playing inside your head, or all around you, or both.
But your goal is not to go down the paths of wordless interior silence. Turning
off the distractions is not actually prayer to the living God. It’s not how to know
Jesus deeply, or how to relate to our Father, or how to “experience” the Spirit. Do
be quiet, and for the right reasons—so you can notice and listen, so you can find
your voice. This living God is highly verbal and listens attentively to you.
Our understanding and practice changes as we begin to talk aloud to the
God who is here. He is not silent or inactive. He listens. He cares. He acts. We
begin to deal with him person to person. The pious verbal tics, the pseudo-lofty
language, and the vain repetitions of God’s name lessen. Then you start to sound
like you know what you need, and know who you’re talking to, and mean what
you say. Many other ingredients also contribute to wise, intelligent, purposeful,
6 AN INVITATION TO SPEAK UP! | POWLISON
earnest prayer. But out loud prayer becomes living evidence of an increasingly honest
and significant relationship. As you become vocal, your faith grows up.
God wants to catch your ear in order to awaken your voice. When you have your
“quiet” time, or as you walk outdoors, or during your commute, may the decibel level
appropriately rise to joyful noise and cries of need—and may you trust that God
listens to the sound of your voice!
***
Our living conversation with God—the give and take of listening and
speaking—defines the core of Christian faith and life. And that living conversation
bears innumerable different kinds of fruit as faithful people walk out the implications.
Each of the articles in this issue comes at one of the implications. The array of articles
illustrates something of the breadth of our faith’s significance—in visiting people in
the hospital, in changing the starting point of a controversial theological doctrine, in
facing the experience of panic, in dealing with the dehumanizing effect of psychiatric
diagnoses, in considering how to find meaning in life, in deciding how to offer
ministry education.
Longtime CCEF faculty member, Winston Smith, recently completed a
chaplaincy internship at a local hospital. His article “Hospital Visitation: Become
a Companion in the Wilderness” is one of the fruits of that experience. Numerous
conversations with patients and their families shaped his thoughts about how to
speak helpfully to people who suddenly find themselves in a difficult and often
frightening situation.
In “The Dreaded S-Word: Submission and Our Proud Hearts,” Robyn
Huck dispels a common misconception about the biblical doctrine of submission.
Submission is not primarily about marriage or gender, but about how we relate to
God. And our essential submission—whether we are male or female, whether married
or single—is a basic and comprehensive aspect of what it means to be a Christian.
Who hasn’t experienced the stirrings of anxiety, or the more full-fledged panic
that can explode further down that road? Pierce Hibbs’s essay reminds us that no
matter how alone we feel, no matter how dangerous the world seems, we are always
surrounded by the creation that expresses the personal presence of God. “Panic and
the Personal God” will give you new ways to find comfort when panic assails you or
someone you are seeking to help.
Ed Welch’s “Spiritual Growth in the Face of Psychiatric Disorders” puts to
work the theological reality that we are embodied souls. He offers three case studies
of people whose serious troubles include a physically-based weakness. He shows
how they are able to grow in their relationship with Christ within the context of
their limitations.
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