Words as Change Agents

Words make a difference.

Sure, it’s what you do that counts and those actions can speak volumes. Yet words are not cheap.

“Did God really say …” The start to a conversation that was enough to shift humanity from reliance on their Creator to a spiral of self-centred, self-determined and basically selfish ambition. Words as a change agent.

“Follow me ….” The start of a conversation that was enough for men to turn their back on their profession to explore life with a wandering rabbi who would be a lot more than they even bargained for. Words as a change agent.

There are those who are very sceptical of hype. There’s also the thought that certain sorts of people are not always to be trusted by what they say. For all that, though, we can be ripe to the power of words as change agents.

For me there was an occasion a couple of decades ago where certain words really made a massive impression on me. The words were simple,

“Do you think things should continue the way they are?”

This was asked by someone I knew who was very much someone given to action. He could speak and enjoyed teaching and training, but he was very much about what could actually be done to make a difference. He was engaged with community work in particular. He offered these words to me, however, when he was putting together a project to engage young people in seeing the power of the good news.

Those words were the right words for me to hear. For years I had been questioning why things were the way they were on different levels – personally, relationally, socially, politically, even in the church. It had not occured to me that there was something I could do to not just find out why things were as they were, but to do something about it.

That’s an odd thing to say looking back on it these years later. The whole point of following Jesus is because there’s an acknowledgement not only that things shouldn’t continue as they are but change is readily available not just in the one off decision, but in a series of decisions, actions and words that can evoke that change. That’s what I know now. It wasn’t as obvious to me way back then. There was almost a conscious differentiation between what happened in a building a few hours a week, to whatever else people did for the rest of the week. Almost as the two would never meet and it was just about surviving through the rest of the week until we got to those precious hours in that building.

The question that this person posed to me was the trigger for a series of actions I took that changed my life and affected all my relationships in ways I had never previously considered.

It’s not worth dwelling on for long, but I do often look back and wonder how life would have been so different if I didn’t hear those words at that time.

Words can be change agents – what words will make the change for you? What words  can you say that will make the change today?

(Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash)

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden