X-Ray Communication

I have had the fortune of knowing a few people who have that rare ability to turn strong ideas and feelings into words.  I am not referring to those who simply play verbal gymnastics in order to impress people with their vocabulary.  I am writing of those who use language as a tool to build bridges and break barriers.  The art of proper speaking (i.e. the right words at the right time) is in the shadows.  The world does not believe in it, nor does it comprehend its power.  It is no small task to be a wizard of words, to speak so simply that even the uneducated can understand you and yet so convincingly that those who contradict you may be silenced.

Many of our failed attempts to affect change around us is due to our inability to communicate well.  Have you ever felt as though you had something inside of you that was anxiously waiting for you to figure out the way to unleash it?  Some kind of powerful tool that you are unable to operate.  Do you ever get the feeling that you have something important to say, only you don’t know exactly what it is or how to say it, frustrated that you can’t make use of its power?  You are simply waiting for the invention of some kind of phrase that would free your thoughts and cause the people to whom you are addressing to jump as if they are sitting on a pin.

The professor Helmholtz in Huxley’s Brave New World while talking to his friend about communicating his feelings interjects,”Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly–they’ll go through anything.  You read and you’re pierced.  That’s one of the things I try to teach my students–how to write piercingly.”

If only we could wield our words this way.  If only we could pray this way.  If only we could communicate truth this way.  If only we could encourage this way.  If only we could rebuke this way.  But then again, words are not enough, are they?  Many have taken after the King in Shakespeare’s Hamlet who when getting off his knees after prayer remarked, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”  He revealed his own knowledge that his prayers were insincere, consisting of words but no true feelings.

So where does the power come from to speak piercingly?  The Bible gives us an awesome account of this power.  When the apostle Peter finished his foundational address to the people in Acts, the text says the people “were pierced to the heart.”  I believe it was the Spirit of God that did the cutting, but the Spirit does not work in a vacuum.  What was it about the message they heard that made it so piercing?  And what about the messenger?  It was simply this: An informed Peter presented to the people a personal, passionate plea.

First, he was informed.  He knew what he was talking about.  Second, he was personal.  He was not exchanging information with them impersonally like a jet receiving fuel in mid-flight.  The message flowed out of him and through him.  A true preacher is the message.  You cannot separate the message from the preacher.  Third, he was passionate.  So many of us are guilty of speaking with as much enthusiasm as a person reading from the yellow pages.  That’s why preaching has gotten such a bad reputation in our culture.  Most of it is so incredibly lousy and boring.

X-ray communication is the kind that is personal, passionate, and pleading.  It can penetrate the soul with an almost superhuman power.  Do you have a message you want to communicate?  Do you want that message to contain power?  Then stay in your seat until you are informed and stay on your knees until you are filled with a personal passion.  The plea will be natural.