Six words that changed the world

One hundred and fifty years ago today, six words changed the world forever. On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell said to his assistant Thomas Watson, “Watson, come here, I want you!” What made these words so revolutionary is that they were spoken over what we know as the “telephone.”

According to Bill Caughlin, AT&T’s corporate archivist, the phones that evolved from Bell’s invention were initially used as private lines for businesspeople, lawyers, and doctors to communicate internally in their offices. Then came the switchboard, enabling entire communities to connect by phone.

According to “Clarke’s Third Law,” appearing as a footnote in futurist Arthur C. Clarke’s 1973 revision of Profiles of the Future, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” He’s right, of course.

When I was a kid, talking into a piece of plastic connected to the wall “magically” connected me to people in rooms I could not see in places I had never been. Today, the same thing happens when I talk into a slab of glass in my hand or through an AirPod in my ear. The day is apparently coming when “ambient computing” will enable us to talk to anyone connected to the internet through devices embedded in our environment.

However, the most “magical” form of communication ever known is the most transforming of all. I’ve been thinking about it today in light of a text I read in my personal Bible study. Of all the principles essential for pastoral ministry and Christian service, this is the most foundational.

And, sadly, the one I too often neglect personally.

“You shall represent the people before God”

I am reading through Exodus these days and came to Jethro’s advice to his son-in-law, Moses:

You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do (Exodus 18:19–20).

Jethro next encourages Moses to select “able men from all the people” and delegate some of his authority to them so they can decide some of the issues brought by the people. In this way, “You will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to their place in peace” (v. 23).

As a pastor, I often considered Jethro’s encouragement to delegation, though I did not follow it as fully as I should have. But only today did I focus on his earlier admonition for Moses to “represent the people before God” before Moses sought to represent God and his word to the people.

In other words, we should pray before we preach. But not just in the way most of us understand the axiom.

I know that I am to pray before preparing sermons, while doing so, and while delivering them. The same applies to articles and books I write and podcasts on which I speak these days.

But I overlooked Jethro’s larger concern that Moses “represent the people before God” in the sense of interceding for them and their needs. Applying this principle to my work as a cultural apologist, I am to pray for our president and leaders before writing about political issues. I am to pray for Iran and other nations before writing about the news pertaining to them. I am to pray for my readers before writing articles for them.

In general, I am to be an intercessor before I am to be anything else in ministry. The same is true for you.

Why?

A canvas on which God paints

The first and most obvious answer is that we must be what we want others to become. If we want those we influence to share their faith, we must share our faith. If we want them to refuse temptation and live with biblical morality, we must do the same. We must be the change we wish to see.

And this happens less by preaching than by praying.

When we preach, teach, or write, we are speaking about God. When we pray, we are speaking to God. And when we speak to God, connecting with him by his Spirit, he is able to mold us in ways he cannot otherwise accomplish. We become wood the carpenter sands and shapes, a canvas on which he paints, clay he forms into the image of his Son (Romans 8:29).

David prayed, “Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me, O Lᴏʀᴅ Gᴏᴅ of hosts” (Psalm 69:6). Billy Graham similarly prayed that he would do nothing to bring disrepute upon the larger body of Christ.

The closer we are to our Father, the less likely we are to dishonor his name. The less we connect with him in prayer, the more likely we are to live in the flesh rather than the Spirit (Galatians 5:16, 25).

The consequences of both are eternal.

“Filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied”

Human words cannot change human hearts. I often told my seminary students that the only words God is obligated to bless are his words. The Bible is “living and active,” but our words are not (Hebrews 4:12). Conversely, God assures us that when we speak his word, his Spirit uses his truth to “accomplish that which I purpose” (Isaiah 55:11).

In Exodus 19 we read that “Moses went up to God” (v. 3a). Then “the Lᴏʀᴅ called to him out of the mountain” and gave him the message he was to “tell the people of Israel” (v. 3b). Because Moses met with God, he could speak for him and declare the message from him to his people.

This is why we need to pray for our people before we speak to them—so we can then share words not just about God but from him. The world desperately needs what God says about the issues and challenges of our day. People yearn to hear authoritative truth from the One who made them in his image and left a “God-shaped emptiness” in their hearts only he can fill.

Prophetic preaching—proclamation that declares words from God to our world—is the urgent need of the day. And there is only one source for such truth.

We read of John the Baptist that “his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied” (Luke 1:67). Like him, we must experience the former to do the latter.

“Set it alight when you speak”

Oswald Chambers observed, “A preacher is one who has realized the call of God and is determined to use his every power to proclaim God’s truth.” Not our truth—his.

To this end, Chambers advised, “Before God’s message can liberate other souls, the liberation must be real in you. Gather your material, and set it alight when you speak.”

When we speak from God for God, the world can never be the same.

Nor can we.