Week 5 Day 6
Ezekiel 3:5 For you are not sent to a people of unfamiliar speech and of hard language, but to the house of Israel,
Have you ever felt like an outsider? Have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t understand what people were saying? It’s difficult enough living in a world where populations of people who speak a language other than the one we understand are as mobile as people groups are today. We are also beset with all kinds of “insider lingo” related to our jobs or avocations. I have struggled to learn the language of music, computers, auto repair, cell phones, and several other fields of endeavor over the course of my life. Always and ever there is a great personal discomfort when I feel like the only person in the room who “doesn’t get it”.
For Ezekiel, his mission was clear, his target audience familiar. He was able to speak boldly to a lost and confused people and to bring them to a place where they would be forced to choose repentance or the utter loss of identity as Jews and be absorbed into the spiritual oblivion that was Babylon.
What happens to you and I as we try to bring the message of grace to a people of “obscure” speech? Far too often we make the mistake of assuming that people are capable of understanding the “insider” Christian language we all speak to each other. This presumption on our part is often alienating, and offensive to people. Perhaps we would do well to pray for God’s guidance and direction allowing the Holy Spirit to inform our speech rather than arrogantly assuming we are being understood. Basic communication of the Gospel is not a two-person affair. There is the speaker, the auditor, and first and foremost the Spirit of God.
Larry M Lawrence- Mysteries 