​Language matters!  For instance, years ago while a missionary in Dublin, I went into a department store and asked for pants.  The desk clerk turned a shade of red and awkwardly directed me to the women’s underwear section.  Then as a dinner guest, if I asked for a napkin, the host should have handed me a diaper.  Once I dined with a friend, who hastily ordered calamari from the menu, mistaking it for caviar.  Boy, was he surprised when the waiter set down a saucer of squid instead of fish eggs! 

Apparently, language matters.  This truth is what the latest group of missionaries-in-training took away from their experience orienteering with a map and compass.  The cadre of wilderness wanderers was actually quite adept at reading the map and using their compasses to find the right direction.  They usually knew where they were, too.  However, the unifying challenge for them came when they tried to prove to the facilitators that they were at the intended destination. 

Pointing to a spot on the topo map, one participant would begin, “If you look over here to the right, next to this green part, you’ll see that the river goes the way it should, and the lines go down indicating that there is definite ground, and that’s how we know we are here.” 

We facilitators would scratch our heads and ask them to repeat the description using more precise map-and-compass lingo—like north, south, east, and west or ridge, valley, saddle, and peak.  We pressed them not only to know where they were, but how to explain it to others. 
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After the first couple of leaders finished proving the destination to the facilitators, they returned to the group with an important new piece of information—“Language matters,” they said.  “The better the precision of our words, the more impactful the intent of their meaning.”

​This concept took root in that passel of missionaries who would be going to distant lands not to just live like Jesus, but also to translate what it means to be a disciple.  The facilitators’ demands of the participants as they proved their locations with the map and compass became just the first of many opportunities these missionaries would have to choose their words for the greatest impact.  As missionaries to foreign lands, language matters. 

It’s no stretch to say that language mattered to Jesus.  Speaking just a few, well-chosen, words, this Teller of parables and Teacher of truth was certainly a linguistic sculptor.  Consider how He so skillfully shut down the verbal traps set by the religious leaders.  That takes the oral skill of a trial lawyer.  Moreover, He usually stood alone as He swatted back their ploys like a pro tennis player skillfully returning a wicked serve.

Jesus was a master of language, but one of the most powerful linguistic statements He ever made would make a high school English teacher want to resign.  Jesus stood in the middle of another verbal brawl with the Pharisees in the temple.  They thought they were in control because He was on their turf.  John chapter 8 records how the scuffle begins with a question of heritage and ends with an all-out assault. 

“Jesus answered them, ‘I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill Me because My word finds no place in you.  I speak of what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.’” (Italics mine.)

He simply established His authority, but the religious leaders didn’t take kindly to the comparison.  After claiming heritage from Abraham, they launched a verbal attack to attempt an assassination of Jesus’s character. 

“They answered Him, ‘Abraham is our father….We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.’”
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Pay attention to their language here.  They know the story of a woman named Mary who showed up pregnant for her own wedding, claiming that God was responsible.  They don’t believe her testimony, though, so they will use this to try to discredit Jesus.  Their language is disguised only by sarcasm, but the message is clear:  you’re the illegitimate son of a scandalous woman.  Them’s fightin’ words when you mess with somebody’s mama!  Jesus pulls no punches as He mounts one of his greatest orations about His deity, beginning with the dismantling assertion that their true father is none other than Satan. 

The Pharisees fuss and pout and stick out their bottom lip and try for great comebacks like, “Well, you’re nothing but a lily-livered Samaritan!”  And, “You think our daddy is the devil, but we’re rubber and you’re glue and that claim bounces off us and sticks to you!” [not an exact quote!] Then they add, “You are not fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?” They must have thought this upstart was no match for their most honored and ancient patriarch of Israel. 
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Then Jesus does it.  He makes a claim, says a phrase that if we didn’t know better, would be just plain bizarre, “Before Abraham was….I AM!”  Bad grammar, flawless clarity.  I bet you could have heard a pin drop as the fidgeting crowd of onlookers, the furtive disciples, and the fuming religious leaders can’t believe what they’ve just heard.  This is burning bush talk.  This is at the heart of the Torah!  This is the very name of Jehovah—unutterable on pain of death!  And they picked up stones to stone Jesus because the message was very clear, and the language mattered:  Jesus officially claimed to be God.  He slipped into the shuffling masses, escaped the barrage, and lived to die another day of His choosing. 
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What about you?  Are you letting the language of the Savior impact your life?  Are Jesus’ words falling on deaf ears?  Is He slipping into the crowd of distractions—an apparition of your soul?  And how do you speak of Him?  Are your words seasoned with the salt of the gospel?  Let His words dictate your life.  Let your words imitate the Savior.  Because after all, language matters.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
Psalm 19:14 (NLT)

​She was standing there shaking.  Oh, I knew she didn’t want to go, but I wouldn’t enable her fear by even hinting that she step back from the challenge.  I calmly and simply, called her to my side as if she had no choice but to obey.  I knew full well that I could not force her, manipulate her, or require her by some rule.  No, she would have to make the decision, and in the moment between my call and her response, the crucible of choice would unveil the outcome like the last pages of a compelling novel. 

I didn’t relish the moment because I wanted for all the world to see her look fear in the eye and reject this thing that had held her back so many times before.  This moment of truth required submission and trust on her part, and as I asked for trust, it meant I would relinquish my own control to her decision.  Would she go through with it?  In that moment of time, I prayed for God to intervene, for the spirit of fear to be vanquished once and for all, and victory in this trembling girl’s battle which had been raging in her mind all day. 

Right from the start, she had vowed that she would not be doing anything remotely hard or scary outside her comfort zone—a space about the size of a postage stamp!  With an accusing finger, she pointed first at her climbing instructor and then at the rock face and said, “And I’m definitely not going down the rappel!” 
The DM facilitator giving the instruction talk was as resolute as the stone he stood upon when he calmly responded, “We’ll see about that.” 

Now, hours later, here she stood before me at the top of the rappel, the day’s activity—the success of her friends, the encouragement of the instructors, and the proven quality of the equipment—having withered her determination to forbid challenge to confront her.  I could see the spirit of fear struggling to gain footing in her mind as she hesitantly stepped toward me and stood at the edge of the cliff.

It occurred to me in that moment that I was dealing not with a timid child but with a false spirit—a spirit of fear.  Fear can come from our enemy, Satan, at least in a form of a spiritual element that affects our minds.  I see it all the time at DM because here we use teaching tools incorporating high, perceived risk with low, actual risk.  Take rock climbing for instance.  It’s a perfectly natural phenomenon to feel fear when standing atop a high place.  That’s not necessarily from the enemy, rather that is a God-given awareness of our safety.  Its normal to want to move away from the edge.  We call that common sense.  So, what’s the problem?  When we encounter a fear moment and refuse to have faith in something more powerful and knowledgeable than ourselves, we make ourselves the authority.  And when this happens, we sometimes succumb to the enemy’s tactics.

In the ministry work at DM, we give a credible replacement for fear by presenting people with the choice to place their faith in reasonable experiences.  When we rock climb, we are not asking people for blind faith and ignorant obedience.  We are asking them to place trust in something reliable, but all the truth in the world won’t make people faithful.  Faith boils down to the willful decision to trust even what one can neither see nor fully understand, and here is where the spirit of fear makes his attack. 
 
For some, fear is a thing that they learned as a child, parents or mentors having modeled it.  It may have increased as they heard people speak of fearful situations that are confusing to understand or that carry a stigma of danger.   For many, it is an ingrained habit of making decision after decision only trusting in what they know--much like the person who has learned to let anxiety reign in him based on an unfettered imagination even before he’s thought about the realities of what’s in front of him.  For most, fear boils down to a loss of control--like my petrified girl felt as she was about to rappel over the edge of a cliff. 

This battle is nothing new.  It’s an age-old war found throughout scripture.  The second, most often stated command in scripture is DO NOT BE AFRAID.  It’s there because we are not alone in our anxieties and fears.  And Jesus has a word for you and me. 

I was reading in scripture recently about the time Jesus was on a mountain overlooking the Sea of Galilee, praying.  He’d just fed five thousand people and sent the disciples on ahead of Him across the lake.  During the night, He watched.  Mark 6:47-48 tells it like this:

And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and He was alone on the land. 
And He saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night, He came to them, walking on the sea. 

None of us really wanted to be stuck behind a broom or bending over a dirty toilet, but for the sixth time in a week, we were cleaning the camp facilities.  The summer intern assigned as my cleaning partner paused from sweeping river sand off the common-room floor and leaning on his broom said, “This sure doesn’t feel like what I signed up for.” 

He was thinking of the day he applied for an internship at Discovery Ministries.  Back then his brain was full of the idea that working at an adventure camp would be all thrill seeking and daring, expedition leading mixed with the subtle glamour of being a bona fide, rock-climbing instructor.  Canoeing, camping, climbing…YES!  Plunging toilets, restocking paper towels, and sweeping up the place…NO!  This young minister-in-training had a point, and as I considered the discrepancy between his expectations and reality, I shared one of the most valuable lessons I had received as a Bible college student. 

My college courses had teemed with learning opportunities to the point where even decades later my mind swam as I remembered the fine oration of top-notch professors, the mentorship of such a godly cloud of witnesses, and the depth of biblical learning the courses presented.  However, as I vacuumed another bunkroom floor, littered by candy wrappers left by idling teens, I remembered one of the best learning opportunities afforded me in Bible college—the day I hired on to the campus custodial crew. 

My first day they put me with two veteran custodians, James and Bill.  Well past middle age, James had been a successful Iowa farmer, and Bill had worked on the assembly line in a tire factory.  Both men had come out of retirement to make a little extra income, and both men brought experience along with a seasoned work ethic.  James seemed to approach every job as though it was of great importance, and from Bill I never heard an irritated word, just saw a happy smile.  They trained me how to spray down toilets and sweep up dust and showed me the best times of day to vacuum the dorms, but the most important lesson was one they modeled for me.  I would be cleaning the bathroom when, in the next stall over, I would hear one of them scrubbing away grime and softly singing hymns from his childhood.  In this simple act, I witnessed a real-life trade secret of the Kingdom that all my expensive college classes had been trying to teach me in theory: at the core of our life in Christ resides not merely a willingness to do the dirty acts of service, but to actually find enjoyment in it.

Jesus is a jovial custodian at heart.  I wonder if he felt like this was what he signed up for.  Instead of entering the city of Jerusalem upon a muscular steed, the conquering hero, the Son of the Living God Almighty he ministered to ignorant masses in backwater villages and obscure countryside’s mentoring low pedigree country bumpkin disciples.  And what he did was so unexpected, often flipping the script on His hearers.  Remember the times He reached out to touch untouchables?  Or the time He said to allow the little children to interrupt a meeting?  Jesus wasn’t scrubbing a latrine, but the humility He expressed on those occasions is the same.  Oddly, he seemed to enjoy himself immensely as he humbled himself before humanity.  Similarly, there was the time described in John chapter 13, just before He went to the cross.  The table was set, everyone had gathered in the room and the providential pieces of God’s plans were in place. That’s when Jesus, knowing He had the full attention of heaven, got up from the table, took a towel and basin, and became a janitor.  The disciples thought they had seen it all, but before their very eyes, Jesus stooped to new levels to wash the mud from their toes.  In this confusing and lowly scene, the main character demonstrated yet again the essence of God’s heart.  God, who deserves to be seated on a throne and worshiped by everyone and everything that ever was, is, or will be, instead took His place as the meek and lowly custodian.  As strange as this seems, it is deep godliness. 

As the camp intern and I continued cleaned, we reminisced about how God the Father actually cleans and re-cleans our hearts.  Our sanctification process requires a diligent and consistent heavenly Custodian who will identify the blots and stains and apply the elbow grease to disinfect our soul.  We understood then that when we repeatedly and joyfully do our cleaning jobs well, we are becoming more like God in His character. 

There is a day coming when every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.  The sky will peel back, the thunder will roll, and everyone who is on the Lord’s side will shout for joy. Those who are not will still bow, and they will regret that they, too, did not make this custodial King their God.  We will kneel then as we kneel now with the opportunities to complete simple and mundane acts of worship, like cleaning toilets.  When we serve cheerfully, our knees will be familiar with this posture—the posture of kneeling to clean a toilet, bending low to sweep up the dust, preparing for a coming King. 
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The intern and I went back to our cleaning.  He took up his broom, smiled, and began sweeping dirt in the far corner of the chapel.  As he swept, I could hear him singing.  

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 
knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.
You are serving the Lord Christ.”
Colossians 3:23-24