​My saw whirred and bit hard into the 2x6 plank, leaving a fresh pine scent wafting in the thin dust.  I laid this final piece of the wall, next to the other studs sitting in orderly rows on the flat, concrete floor.  Checking that each plank was in place, I began blasting framing nails into the wood like a hen pecking at grain—like a very small chicken in a really big farmyard. I pecked away at the overwhelming task of building a house—one cut, one timber, and one nail at a time. 
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I had begun learning the carpentry trade from my brother-in-law when I joined his building crew during the years between being a missionary and a camp director.  I did it for the money, but I learned a valuable skill-set in the process that I still use frequently.  However, the trade really became embedded in my mind when I embarked on building my own home.  It was then that I had to make the decisions, draft the plans, order the materials, and organize a crew. The consequences of my mistakes would cost me personally in dollars and time.  By the end of the two years it took to build that home, I promised myself I’d never do that again, but the passing of time can sometimes cause us to forget all the undesirable aspects of an event and only remember the good results.  The past difficulties blur and become a fond reminiscence of the path to victory.  

​The other day as I hefted a heavy stud wall into place, one small phase in the long and arduous task of building the new Discovery Ministries staff house, it reminded me with acute retrospection of the challenges in constructing my house--challenges that had previously caused me to swear off being a builder. 
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“How long do you think this will take to build?” asked one of my co-workers. 
I scratched my chin and thought about how we were only finding a few partial days here and there to work on the structure, thought some more about how slow I am as an amateur carpenter, and then considered how the project is being funded a little at a time through the financial overflow of a small, non-profit, Christian wilderness camp. 

“It could take us a while,” I admitted. 

“Who do you think will live here?” the staff member mused as he drove another nail.
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​“Not sure,” I said, wiping sweat from my eyes.  “For now, I guess we’re just preparing for the future.”  

As I worked, I kept thinking about something Jesus said to his disciples while they enjoyed that last supper: ​
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“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (Jn 14:1-3)
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Before Jesus was a rabbi instructing fledgling blue-collar disciples, before He taught the masses and stood toe-to-toe against the Pharisees, before He was Messiah—better said, while He was Messiah—He was a carpenter.  He would know how to “prepare a place.” So, it was with pleasure that I could identify with this Jesus, who could swing a hammer, snap a chalk line, and set a foundation corner.  I also saw why He is described with so much “builder talk.” He is the “Capstone” and the “Cornerstone” and the “Builder” that the prophet Amos saw standing with plumb line and measuring rod.
 
“I go to prepare a place for you.” Remembering the former carpenter made this promise, I considered that I am slowly building and preparing for the next generation of camp staff a “place,” complete with living room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms, and den.  So, I can be a little more understanding as to why it has taken Jesus so long to return.  Building a quality dwelling takes time, and He is preparing a place for us beyond anything we can ask or imagine.

​I picked up another nail—one of the many it would take to fasten this structure together—and paused to feel its weight and gaze at its significance.  On the night Judas betrayed Jesus into the hands of the Jewish religious rulers and the Roman authorities, He told His disciples He would go prepare a place for them. I now suddenly realized that when Jesus said He would go and prepare a place for us, He actually began laying the foundation that very night—not with a saw blade slicing wood, but with the deep cuts striping His back, a punishment alone that often killed victims of that time.  Then He lifted the wood—the beam called a patibulum or cross, carried it to the worksite, and laid the foundation with His life.  Being a carpenter, Jesus knew how to drive a nail, and He said He would go to prepare a place. So, the first nails driven in the preparation were the ones that went through His hands and feet. 
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I keep returning to our building site, even after mess-ups and miscalculations because I can see progress. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as seeing a wall go up, watching the house take shape, and imagining the potential.  Maybe that’s why when Hebrews 12:2 refers to the cross, it specifies “who for the joy set before Him, [Jesus] endured the cross.”  He was glad to begin the building process then and continue it today in you and me as we are being built into a dwelling place worthy of the Holy Spirit of God.  Like a good house, we are being built one nail at a time.  

​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.