Whisper

by Mark Batterson

  Divergent Thinking

  In the early years of the Head Start program, a study was conducted involving sixteen hundred children who were tested in a wide variety of categories, including divergent thinking. Convergent thinking is the ability to correctly answer a question that doesn’t require creativity, just analytical intelligence. Divergent thinking is a very different animal. It’s the ability to generate creative ideas by exploring possible solutions.

  When asked to come up with as many uses for a paper clip as possible, the average person can rattle off ten to fifteen uses. A divergent thinker can come up with about two hundred.43 Both convergent and divergent thinking are critical for different kinds of tasks, but divergent thinking is a better predictor of Nobel Prize potential.44

  In the longitudinal study conducted by Head Start, 98 percent of children ages three to five “scored in the genius category for divergent thinking. Five years later…this number had plummeted to only 32 percent….Five years later again…it was down to 10 percent.”45

  What happened during that decade? Where did divergent thinking go? And what does that have to do with the language of desires? Here’s my take: most of us lose touch with who we really are and what we really want. Instead of following our God-ordained desires in the direction of individuation, the voice of gladness is drowned out by the voice of conformity. And it may start the day you wear a pink shirt to junior high.

  We worry way too much about what people think, which is evidence that we don’t worry enough about what God thinks. It’s the fear of people that keeps us from hearing and heeding the voice of God. We let the expectations of others override the desires God has put in our hearts. The net result? Those desires get buried about six feet deep. Eventually, we forget who we really are.

  One of the most thought-provoking questions in the Gospels is this: “What do you want me to do for you?”46 In one sense the question seems unnecessary, because Jesus asks the question of a blind man. We can all guess his answer, right? He wants his sight, of course. So why does Jesus ask the question? The answer is simple: Jesus wants to know what we want.

  If Jesus were to ask the average person walking into the average church, “What do you want Me to do for you?” I’d bet nine out of ten would have a hard time answering that question. Why? Because we’re out of touch with what we really want.

  If you don’t know what you want, how are you going to know when you get it? Maybe it’s time to take inventory. What do you want God to do for you? You owe it to Him to answer that question.

  Free the Fool

  For more than thirty years, Gordon MacKenzie served as creative paradox at Hallmark Cards. His job was helping colleagues slip the bonds of corporate normalcy. He also held creativity workshops at elementary schools. In his book Orbiting the Giant Hairball, MacKenzie levels an indictment: “From cradle to grave, the pressure is on: be normal.”47

  When hosting creativity workshops, MacKenzie would conduct informal surveys by asking, “How many artists are there in the room?” In the first grade the entire class waved their arms like crazy. In the second grade about half the hands went up. In the third grade a third of the kids responded. And by the time he got to the sixth graders, only one or two kids would tentatively raise their hands.

  According to MacKenzie every school he visited was participating in the suppression of creative genius by training kids away from their natural-born foolishness. Instead of their genius being celebrated and validated, it was criticized and inoculated. And the voice of normalcy became the loudest voice in the room.

  There is a fool in each of us, you know. A rash, brash, harebrained, audacious, imprudent, ill-suited, spontaneous, impolitic, daredevil Fool, which, in most of us, was long ago hog-tied and locked in the basement.48

  Jesus came to set captives free.49 In other words He came to free the fool. And not just free the fool but use fools like you and me to shame the wise.50

  Salvation is so much more than forgiveness for sin. Jesus wants to set us free from the psychological straitjacket we’ve gotten ourselves into, but we have to dare to be different. We have to walk to the beat of a different drum: holy desire.

  The Bible calls us “a peculiar people.”51 So why are we trying to be normal? If uniqueness is God’s gift to us, then individuation is our gift back to Him. And it starts with hearing and heeding the voice of desire. And when God’s voice is the loudest voice in our lives, we can dare to be different.

  THE DOOR TO BITHYNIA

  The Third Language: Doors

  See, I have placed before you an open door.

  —REVELATION 3:8

  On December 26, 2004, the third-largest earthquake ever recorded by seismograph1 occurred deep beneath the Indian Ocean, producing the energy equivalent of twenty-three thousand Hiroshima-type atomic bombs.2 It registered 9.1-magnitude on the Richter scale, and the shock waves produced tsunami waves more than one hundred feet in height, traveling five hundred miles per hour and reaching a radius of three thousand miles.3 This deadliest tsunami in history claimed 227,898 lives,4 but one people group living right in its path miraculously survived without a single casualty.

  The Moken are an Austronesian ethnic group that maintains a nomadic sea-based culture. They live on the open seas from birth to death.5 Their handcrafted wooden boats, called kabang, function as houseboats for these sea gypsies. Moken children learn to swim before they learn to walk. They can see twice as clearly underwater as landlubbers. And if there were an underwater breath-holding contest, it would be no contest. But it wasn’t any of these skills that saved them from the tsunami. What saved them was their intimacy with the ocean. The Moken know its moods and messages better than any oceanographer, reading ocean waves the way we read street signs.

  On the day of the earthquake, an amateur photographer from Bangkok was taking pictures of the Moken when she became concerned by what she saw. As the sea started to recede, many of the Moken were crying.6 They knew what was about to happen. They recognized that the birds had stopped chirping, the cicadas had gone silent, the elephants were headed toward higher ground, and the dolphins were swimming farther out to sea.

  What did the Moken do?

  Those who were near the coast of Thailand beached their boats and hiked to the highest elevation possible. Those who were out at sea sailed even farther out to sea. They made it to the deep ocean, where they knew the tsunami crest would be minimalized as it passed them. Burmese fishermen in the same vicinity as the Moken were blindsided by the tsunami and had no survivors. “They were collecting squid,” said one Moken survivor. “They don’t know how to look.”7 The waves and birds and cicadas and elephants and dolphins were speaking to those Burmese fishermen, but sadly they didn’t know how to listen.

  According to Dr. Narumon Hinshiranan, an anthropologist who speaks Moken, “The water receded very fast and one wave, one small wave, came so they recognized that this is not ordinary.”8

  One small wave?

  Really?

  As amazing as it seems, that’s all it took for the Moken to recognize trouble. That and an ancient legend that had been passed down from generation to generation about a wave called Laboon, the “wave that eats people.”9 Somehow they perceived this was that wave.

  One fascinating footnote. The Moken don’t know how old they are because their concept of time is very different from ours. They don’t have a word for when. They don’t have a word for hello or goodbye. And although we might view that as a logistical liability, it’s more than mere coincidence that the Moken don’t have a word for worry either.10

  Signs

  The Moken are a metaphor. Like these seafaring people who speak the language of the sea, we speak the language of the Spirit. And one of His dialects is doors: open doors and closed doors. In a sense this third language is sign language. Jesus warned against signs and wonders serving as the litmus test of faith,11 but that doesn’
t negate their value when it comes to navigating the will of God.

  Remember Pharaoh? He ignored ten miracles that were the ancient equivalent of flashing neon signs! How did that work out for him? Ignoring signs is ignoring the God who speaks through them, and we do so to our own detriment.

  What if Noah had ignored the forecast?

  What if Joseph had disregarded Pharaoh’s dreams?

  What if Moses had walked by the burning bush without stopping?

  What if the wise men had dismissed what the stars were saying?

  What if Saul had mistaken his vision on the road to Damascus for an equestrian accident?

  If Noah had ignored the sign, he and his family would have died in the flood, and human history as we know it would have ended. If Joseph had disregarded Pharaoh’s dreams, two nations would have been destroyed by famine. If Moses had kept walking, the exodus of Israel would not have happened, and the Promised Land would not have been possessed. If the wise men hadn’t followed the star, they would not have discovered the Messiah. And if Saul hadn’t done an about-face, he would not have become Paul, and half of the New Testament would never have been written.

  I know that signs are subject to interpretation, and there is a very fine line between reading them and reading into them. Please don’t make decisions based on horoscopes, tarot cards, or palm reading—all of which are forms of divination and false signs. And I wouldn’t base your big decisions on fortune cookies either! But we must learn to read signs the way we read Scripture—with the Holy Spirit’s help. Make no mistake about it: God speaks through circumstances. Scripture is our direct evidence, but circumstantial evidence counts too.

  The language of doors requires the gift of discernment, which goes beyond intuition based on accumulated experience. It goes beyond contextual intelligence and emotional intelligence. Discernment is the ability to appraise a situation with supernatural insight. It’s prophetic perception that sees past problems and envisions possibilities. Simply put, it’s picking up what God is throwing down.

  Signs Following

  Before detailing the language of doors, let me remind you that we don’t interpret Scripture via signs; we interpret signs via Scripture. And generally speaking, God uses signs to confirm His Word, His will. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course. After all, God writes the rules. But the words that close Mark’s gospel set precedent: “signs following.”12

  We wish it said “signs preceding,” right? That would be so much easier. But that isn’t the sequence of faith in Scripture. Consider the parting of the Red Sea and the parting of the Jordan River. Those signs gave the Israelites incredible confidence that God would make a way where there was no way. But Moses had to extend his staff first. The priests had to step into the river first. Only then did God part the waters. Faith is taking the first step before God reveals the second step.

  Our first attempt at church planting was a failure, and I’ve shared some of those hard lessons in other books, but let me fill in a few of the blanks. In the wake of that failure, I was reading a ministry magazine when I came across an advertisement for a parachurch ministry in Washington, DC. I have no idea why I stopped flipping pages, but that ad arrested my attention. The door to DC opened just a crack. I made a phone call, which led to a visit, which led to a 595-mile leap of faith from Chicago to DC, which led to the past twenty years of ministry in the nation’s capital.

  That sounds neat and clean, but it was an agonizing decision. Lora and I both grew up in the Chicago area, so it was all we had ever known. Plus, Michael Jordan was still playing for the Chicago Bulls! Why would we want to move? We had no desire to leave Chicago, but nothing closes a door faster than failure. Actually, it slams the door shut. And sometimes our fingers are still in the doorjamb.

  Looking back, I think that failed attempt was the only way God was going to get us where He wanted us to be. It was nothing short of His grace. And I’m as grateful for that closed door as I am for any of the doors He has opened in my life. It was the closed door that led to an open door, and that’s how it generally works.

  Now here’s the rest of the story. Our move to DC was a difficult decision, so I wanted God to give us a clear sign. You know, something simple like a skywriting plane sketching the word Washington on the eastern horizon! Part of the reason I wanted a sign was because we didn’t have a place to live or a guaranteed salary. But we didn’t get a sign until after we made the decision to move. Then, and only then, did God give us a sign.

  The day we made the decision, I went to our mailbox on the campus of Trinity International University and discovered a postcard addressed to me. The front of the card said, “Your future is in Washington.” Not even kidding! Why George Washington University sent me that postcard is still a mystery, but getting it right after making such a huge decision qualifies as a sign following. God didn’t just open a door; He rolled out a red carpet.

  It’s human nature to second-guess difficult decisions, and that’s why God is gracious enough to give us confirmations. God knew that I’d experience some self-doubt during the early days of our church plant in Washington, so He sent a postcard. That postcard is a spiritual memento that reminds me of God’s faithfulness, even in failure.

  Five Tests

  When it comes to discerning God’s will, I sometimes wish we could just cast lots as the disciples did when choosing Judas’s replacement. It’d be a lot quicker and easier than trying to discern God’s voice, wouldn’t it? But that would take intimacy out of the equation, and intimacy is the end goal. Discerning the will of God is about so much more than doing His will. Discerning His will is about knowing His heart, and that happens only when you get close enough to hear Him whisper.

  Here are five tests I employ when discerning the will of God, the voice of God.

  The first test is the Goose-Bump Test. The Celtic Christians had an intriguing name for the Holy Spirit. They called Him An Geadh-Glas, which means “the Wild Goose.”13 I love the imagery and the implications. There is an element of unpredictability about who He is and what He does. And I can’t think of a better description of living a Spirit-led life—it’s a Wild Goose chase. We have no idea where we’re going much of the time, but as long as we keep in step with the Spirit, we’ll get where God wants us to go. That can be a little unnerving at times, but it’s awfully exciting too. In fact, it’ll give you goose bumps. Or more accurately, Wild Goose bumps!

  The will of God should make your heart skip a beat. You certainly have to pass that feeling through the filter of Scripture, but the quickening of the Holy Spirit often causes goose bumps.

  I’m certainly not suggesting that you do only the things that get you fired up. Taking out the garbage doesn’t give me goose bumps. Neither does doing the dishes. But those jobs have to be done. What I am suggesting is that when you go after a God-sized dream or a God-ordained calling, you should get goose bumps every now and then. The will of God is not drudgery. Remember, if you are delighting yourself in the Lord, then God will give you the desires of your heart. Like a game of hot and cold, those desires will get hotter and hotter the closer you get to God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will.

  The second test is the Peace Test. The apostle Paul said, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”14 Does that mean you won’t feel scared or stressed? Nope. It simply means this: you know in your heart of hearts that it’s the right thing to do. It’s a peace that literally passes understanding.15 It’s not just peace in the midst of the storm; it’s peace in the perfect storm. Instead of being scared out of your wits, you have a holy confidence against all odds.

  The third test is the Wise Counsel Test. We don’t discern the will of God all by our lonesome. When we try all by ourselves to get where He wants us to go, we usually get lost. My advice? Surround yourself with people who have been there and done that. Surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you. Surround yourself with pe
ople who have permission to speak the truth in love. Simply put, seek wise counsel.16 This test will save you some trials and get you out of others. And because of our infinite ability to deceive ourselves, it’s an important check and balance.

  The fourth test is the Crazy Test. By definition, a God-sized dream is always beyond our abilities, beyond our logic, and beyond our resources. In other words, we can’t do it without God’s help. In my experience God ideas often seem like crazy ideas. That’s how I felt when God originally gave us a vision for a coffeehouse on Capitol Hill. Frankly, we had no business going into the coffeehouse business. But it was just crazy enough to be God.

  I don’t know what God’s will is for your life, and you certainly need to do your homework. But faith is the willingness to look foolish. Noah looked a little crazy building a boat. Sarah looked a little crazy shopping for maternity clothes at age ninety. The wise men looked a little crazy following a star to Timbuktu. Peter looked a little crazy getting out of a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee. If you aren’t willing to look a little crazy, you’re crazy. And when it’s the will of God, crazy turns into crazy awesome!

  The fifth and final test goes by a longer moniker. I call it the Released-from and Called-to Test, and it requires a longer explanation.

  One of my spiritual heroes died many years before I was born. Peter Marshall, who immigrated to America from Scotland, served two terms as chaplain to the United States Senate and was pastor of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, dubbed “the church of presidents.” As it was for Marshall, Washington is my parish. So I found unique inspiration from A Man Called Peter, a book and movie about Marshall’s life and ministry. But it’s how he landed at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church that is particularly instructive.