Crash the Chatterbox: Hearing God's Voice Above All Others (4 page)

This doesn’t mean the chatter will end.

It just means that we’ll have something stronger—and louder—to override it every time it starts.

It may help to think about it this way.

Currently, as I write, I’m listening to a worship album by Hillsong United on my iPhone. It’s a pretty mellow album, so it does the trick to help me concentrate. I’m listening through my noise-canceling headphones. They’re a real gift from God, because my wife is just across the room, talking to three of our female church staff members. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Maybe a pressing leadership or motherhood issue, maybe
Downton Abbey
, or maybe how they can’t wait to read my next book that I’m working on so hard over here. Most likely
Downton Abbey
.

The point is, I don’t know. They’re less than fifty feet away from me, and they’re talking, talking, talking; yet it doesn’t bother me a bit. Doesn’t interrupt me. Doesn’t hinder my progress, isn’t breaking my flow.

As long as I keep my headphones on and turned up loud, they can chat away, employing their conversational gifts to the fullest, and I’m cool in my own world. I’m tuned in to something different.

I want to be careful here to avoid any comparison between my wife and the chatterbox. It’s just an analogy. But in the pages that follow, I want to show you how to do this same thing—block out noise—on a spiritual level.

This book is built on four confessions. They are meant to function like noise-canceling headphones for your mind, heart, and soul. These are truths about God and truths about you that come straight from God’s Word. The term
confession
has many connotations, but literally it means “to say with” God. So by filling our spiritual ears with these four declarations of truth, we receive and respond to what God says about who He is and who we are in Him.

Each of the four confessions will target one of the main areas in which the Enemy uses chatter to corrupt our souls and weaken our faith. And with the Spirit’s help, we’ll blow the lies of the chatterbox to smithereens.

The confessions are life-giving, faith-increasing statements that are designed for you to repeat in your heart and mind, even rehearse out loud. You can play them from the time you wake up and the chatterbox starts blasting reveille until the chatterbox starts trying to sing you to sleep at night with lullabies and lies, replays and regrets.

They’re not magical statements, but they produce miraculous results when actively applied.

You may want to take a moment to get familiar with these four confessions, because they’ll shape the foundation of the book, and hopefully they’ll become a foundational part of
you
by the time we’re finished.

The changes these confessions will incite in our lives are revolutionary. Not because the confessions are fancy or brilliant, but simply because they are
powerful
. And they are
God’s truths
. In His hands and with your cooperation, they are little sticks of dynamite that will turn skyscrapers of harmful thinking into piles of rubbish.

Knowledge without application won’t do the job, though. So we won’t dwell too long on mere facts or theories. Instead, we become liberated from lies as we actively embrace the ways God wants to reimagine and re-create our hearts. In the process we are joined with Him as He aligns our lives with these new realities.

So are you ready to reload your listening device? Let’s ask God to clear the
space we need so that in the pages that follow we can receive the truths we encounter at the deepest level possible.

The first truth is this:
When it comes to hearing God’s voice, identity always comes before activity
.

And that’s a spiritual secret the chatterbox was hoping you’d never discover.

In which we overpower

the lies of insecurity

with the truth

God says I am
.

I got hooked on
The Voice
recently. It’s a singing contest reality show with a twist. And to me, the twist is what makes it worth watching.

You know that in most TV singing competitions, how cool people look or how likable they are can play a bigger part than their actual singing ability in determining whether the judges put them through to the next round of the competition. Well, not on
The Voice
, because the judges can’t see the contestants. In the blind audition round, the judges are seated in big red chairs with their backs facing the contestants. And if judges like what they hear after a contestant starts singing, they hit a big red button. The button makes their chairs turn around, and a big neon light at the bottom of the chairs comes on, declaring, I WANT YOU. That means the judge is picking the contestant, sight unseen, to be on his team. The quality of the voice was enough to get one of the top musical talents in the world to commit to be the person’s coach. He or she will be on that team for the rest of the competition. But I don’t usually watch the rest of the competition, because the blind audition round makes for the best TV.

It’s intense to see somebody singing her heart out for a panel of judges who may or may not choose her and can’t even see her.

Sometimes all four judges turn their chairs around. Then Usher and Blake Shelton and Adam Levine from Maroon 5 and Shakira all start arguing over
who gets to be the coach. Next thing you know, there’s a full-blown debate about who discovered Justin Bieber and whose hips are lying. It’s so strange to see these musical giants fighting over who gets to work with this previously unknown aspiring artist.

But the craziest thing to see is the times when
no
chairs turn around. That’s a downright depressing scene, man.
Nobody
is choosing this person.
No
lights are shining. The message is clear: Nobody wants you. You’re going home, rejected. Back to singing “Unchained Melody” at your cousin’s wedding in Buffalo.

I guess it hit me halfway through the first episode I watched: most of us go through our lives like these contestants go through those blind auditions. Waiting on someone to hit a button. Auditioning our hearts out for acceptance and approval.

And all these judges we’ve appointed are sitting in chairs we’ve furnished in our minds. We have to get them to turn around somehow. To do something or say something—to prove something to someone. The panel of judges may vary from person to person, but our driving motivation is the same:
we’re trying to escape a self-inflicted prison of insecurity
. And we need these people to do something or say something that will get us out.

Obviously, we
do
need people around us who can affirm our gifts, lift our spirits, and build our courage. God uses others as part of His plan to satisfy our craving to belong and our need to be loved. For proof, see Eve.

But the chatterbox, doing what it does, takes a perfectly good desire and distorts it beyond recognition.

Maybe we have our parents in one chair. In some cases they’re not even around anymore, or maybe we don’t see them much. But accusations they made or affirmations they withheld can keep us in a state of perpetual insecurity.

Maybe somebody you work with or go to school with occupies another chair, and if that person would include you, compliment you, notice you—
Hit that button!
—you’d be in.

Somebody you dated once is in the next chair, and if you could just
succeed
, then you’d be singing “take a look at me now,” and she’d rue the day she ever walked away from you. And you’d be
justified!
Vindicated!

And finally good enough.

What’s sad and stupid about all this, of course, is that none of these people has a button to hit.

What’s even sadder is, the One who is sitting in the only chair that really counts has already turned around. The only One who has the power to give us true approval has already offered it, freely and fully.

But too often we can’t sense this approval from God. Why? Because conflicting messages from the chatterbox are constantly incoming, and we can’t get it all sorted out clearly enough to tell the truth from the lies. Part of the reason for this has to do with our misunderstanding about the nature of insecurity.

For years I thought of insecurity as the opposite of pride. Like, cocky people struggle with pride, and on the other end of the spectrum, godly, humble people have to struggle with insecurity.

But insecurity is much more than an extreme lack of confidence.

In some ways insecurity is the ultimate insult to God. Because when we allow insecurity to override God’s purpose in our lives, we’re implying that He didn’t quite get the job done when He put us together.

If that sounds like an overstatement, I want you to look at one of my favorite Old Testament passages and consider what it means to people like you and me and how it casts a new light on the insecurities in our lives.

Jeremiah was a prophet. I know Three Dog Night claimed he was something different, and you’re probably tired of hearing people brag about the quality of his wine, but this is a different deal, you know.

Jeremiah the
prophet
was endued with the kind of resilience that is reserved for people who have to face unusual resistance. During a time of political upheaval, he was called by God to preach a searing message of repentance to the people of his hometown. His message was rejected throughout most of his ministry. He lived in isolation, suffered persecution, and saw, from an earthly perspective, little success in his lifetime.

Now that you know the basic context of Jeremiah’s calling and career, I think you’ll see the striking significance of the words God spoke to him in his teenage years, as his ministry was just beginning.

The Scriptures record Jeremiah’s memory of the conversation:

These words have meant so much to me throughout my own ministry. Not because I consider myself a prophet to the nations. Rather, because they reveal a general truth about not only
how
but
when
God’s approval comes to me. It’s a reality that has become an anchor for my sense of security. A reality I need to revisit constantly.

I was half joking to my friend the other day about how ironic it is that preachers sometimes tend to be the most insecure people on the planet. I think it’s partially because we have to confidently declare truths to others that we often have a hard time believing ourselves. This creates quite the inner conflict. Because you’re up there telling people how they don’t need to live for the approval of others, but as you’re preaching, you’re looking for external signs of approval from the people you’re preaching to. Then when you finish preaching, you check your social-media stream to see what others thought about your sermon—maybe to find that not many people are thinking about your sermon at all. Embarrassing to admit, but it’s true. Insecurity is a powerful force.