For my dad who taught me to find my voice.
What do cheeseburgers at a local hamburger joint, sippy cups, potty breaks, the movie Transformers, politics, church doctrine, and apologetics have in common?
Absolutely nothing if you are an outsider looking in. But if you are an insider—someone wrapped up within this crazy scene that I call my life—it makes sense. Cheeseburgers and God talk are an easy swallow at our table. Our family’s daily routine has always been fallow soil for the sowing of sacred seeds. No matter the occasion. Regardless of the location. Whatever our current, we are a family who puts voice to our faith.
Seldom is it polished. Rarely is it perfect. But thankfully, hardly ever has it been silent. We are a family of words. There is not a quiet one of us in the bunch. We embrace our emotions with reckless abandon and with the fortitude of warriors. We fight hard. We laugh loudly. We cry boldly, and we love unashamedly. Silence has rarely been our portion. For good or for ill, if we are feeling it or pondering it, we usually speak it.
It has always been this way for me. Early on, my daddy taught me to find my voice. His voice…his life…was meant for the stage. Dramatic flare has been his scripting. He spins and weaves a story like no other. I spent the nights of my young years being lulled to sleep by the wild imaginings of this man whose voice commanded my attention. Table time was always an occasion where the stories of his day would find their rest within my soul. Whether out in public or in the safety of home turf, I loved hearing my father talk. There was something true and honest and pure about his speech.
My daddy never lied to me. He lived his life out loud and in front. He was genuine in his pursuit and in his passion for God. The faith he talked was the faith he walked. Seldom was it polished. Rarely was it perfect, but always was it professed. And while there were a few who had a hard time swallowing his unedited life, I welcomed it. I continue to do so, for my father is still in the habit of taking the stage, and I am still in the grateful habit of giving him an audience.
Spoken faith. Embracing the voice of our story. Putting words to the faith that scripts our hearts so that others might chorus their harmony alongside.
It seems a simple thing…this sacred speaking, and yet we are prone to our listless and stammering tongues. To our forgetting and to our postponing. To our “saving it for another day” until we are better prepared—freshly polished and closer to our perfection. We wait for the appropriate without realizing that our appropriate is now. For whenever faith is the issue, speaking the truth of its story becomes our necessary appropriate.
To our kids. To our friends. To the body of Christ and to those beyond. Whatever stage boasts our presence, our story comes with us. And if silence is our portion, then faith remains as unspent. This is a tragedy for the kingdom of God because an unspent faith always yields empty and breathes shallow.
If faith is to be raised in this generation and in the generation to come, then faith must be spoken aloud.
We can never assume that our actions are enough. Faith, does indeed, come through the hearing, and hearing through the Word of God (Romans 10:17). No wonder God’s strong mandates for his people to impress their faith upon their children. To talk about it when they sat at home and when they walked along the road. When they lay down and the when they arose. He knew that they…that we…would be prone to its neglect. A faith not spoken is a faith quickly forgotten.
And with our forgetting comes one of the most unnecessary and tragic ends I believe to be recorded in all of scripture.
“Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Amnon and Moab. Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah.” (Nehemiah 13:23-24).
When God’s people forget to remember his directives, when they refuse to live his requirements, their children are at risk of losing the capacity to speak their native tongue—the language of their Father. Instead, they assimilate their speech to the patterns of another people—a foreign tongue never meant for their taste. Sacred speak is replaced by temporal translation, and words no longer breathe with the lasting fullness of forever. They spend as casual and swallow as empty.
That was and still is, my friends, the danger of an unspoken faith. The world is quick to find its voice when we remain content to keep our silence. And I, for one, will not cripple my children with a language that will never speak them into the folds of heaven. No, I will give them my faith through my words in prayerful belief that the language of my Father will become the language of their souls.
It starts with cheeseburgers and questions and wishing wells and locked closets and fretful wonderings. In the simple of routine and in the complex of struggles. In all those teachable moments that present themselves in the seemingly ordinary, while begging the possibility of a shaping toward the extraordinary.
Raising a people of faith is possible; in fact it is probable when done with a voice that will no longer keep its silence.
And so I say to you today, as loudly as my words can type…
Speak your faith to your children. To your grandchildren and to your neighbor. Even if they are grown and scattered and seemingly past the point of receiving your words. Fear not the taunts of perfection and polish. Rather, embrace the sound of your voice, and let your words fall as fresh seed upon the souls in desperate need of learning to speak the language of our Father.
It is not always easy, but it is always good and right, and it is the mandate given to every last one of us as partakers in our Father’s kingdom. And so I pray…
Give me courage, Lord, to find my voice. Give me a melody to sing your praises. Script my tongue with the sacred language of your holy Word, and sanctify my mouth for your intended purposes. Let not my fear keep me from speaking the truth of who you are, and let not my weak and sometimes feeble faith be a hindrance to those I teach. And where I need some polishing and perfection, come and cleanse accordingly. Amen.
Copyright © May 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.
How is God teaching you to speak your faith to others? I welcome your comments and look forward to continuing our study together. Shalom!
he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’” (Acts 1:9-11). 
