Communication is more than words.
Communication certainly is more than words: we communicate through music, art, food, clothing, house decoration, and acting.
There are more than 100 types of digital communication.[1] Blogs, infographics, vlogs, podcasts, cartoons, animations, apps etc. Advertisers contend for your attention, to communicate their message to you in countless of ways. One of the number one requests and challenges in marriage is communication. In the workplace most problems arise due to poor communication. Many parents complain: “I do not know how to communicate with my child anymore.” Let’s all concur: Communication is difficult!
Most often arguments arise because of conflicting signals and wrongly pre-conceived misconceptions about a person. It’s important to realise that while actual words mainly include dictionary type meanings but add inference, intention, context, tone, facial expression, gesture, humour, irony and metaphor and the meaning and understanding of what is said are changed or enhanced completely. We basically communicate who we are. What you are always speaks louder than what you say.
Communication is Connection.
Without connection there can be no communication. Like a power chord needs to be plugged into the power source for the current of electricity to flow from one source to another. So also, we need to be plugged in to another person or people, for true communication and transfer of information to occur. Artists, speakers, comedians, performers strive to connect with the audience, and then deliver their content. One cannot really transfer any form of information without connecting with your hearer/s. Surely language and words are essential to communication, but connection is more than words. Connection involves reciprocal flow, dialogue, listening and reacting, finding resonance.
Poor communication and lack of connection leads to misunderstandings, division, slander, gossip, anarchy, offense, war and chaos. Connections lead to life. When a husband and a wife come together, babies are born. When the spirit of a person and the Spirit of God come together, new birth takes place. (John 3:5) When brothers and sisters come together in unity, God commands his blessing (Psalm 133). When the disciples came together on the day of Pentecost, there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2)
God is the best communicator ever! He knows how to ensure that we get the message. From narratives retold from one generation to the other, written text, ritual, signs and wonders, visual stimulation in nature, but ultimately by incarnating the Word and becoming flesh! His Words remains for ever! We should accordingly get our communication ques from the Godhead, because we were made in His image. Examining the way He communicates reveals the best method and directive for our communication.
We are more connected than we know
Following the way trees communicate: There is now overwhelming evidence that trees of the same species are communal and will often form alliances with trees of other species. Forest trees have evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication and a collective intelligence similar to an insect colony.[2]
This is revealing concerning the intend of creation, beginning in Eden – community, meeting, fellowship, family, heaven on earth, unified, collective oneness, divine purpose. Sin was the disconnect from this harmony. Pride, lies, disobedience, strive, envy, laziness, wrath is the means of disconnection. Our battle in life as believers is continuing to stay connected. Contractionary, all life in God is connected in Christ. Sin is a form of blindness and ignorance, and disregard of this connection. Like children are connected biologically to their parent’s DNA, their rebellion ignores and violates this connection.
In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All people are involved in a inevitable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Martin Luther King
What did Jesus teach about connection?
What kind of spirit are you off
Your spirit is important above all; “you do not know of what kind of spirit are you off?” (Luk 9:56) Jesus rebukes His young ambitious disciples. Your spirit determines the quality of connection. The Father is the mind and intend, Jesus is the Word, the Spirit is the incarnation and execution of the Word. You send forth Your Spirit, they are created (Ps 104:30) This is what made Jesus so effective: His thoughts, words and actions lined up perfectly. Freely you have received, freely give. What are you full off? You can only give what you have on the inside. Jesus was full of the Spirit. (Luk 4:1, 11) But being full of the Holy Spirit was required of all leaders in the church. (Acts 6:3; 5; 7:55; 11:24) that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Eph 3:17-19)
Connection begins in the Heart.
The creator is kindness, love, connection, and stability.
Love will make a way. When people are convinced of your love and affection, communication flows like many rivers and streams in countless ways. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. (Mat 12:34) The heart determines the content of the flow. Whatever has filled your heart whether heart, worries, fear, doubt, concern, frustration it will come out in words, actions, notions, habits, and actions. Having your heart filled with faith, the word of God, God’s will and love creates life!
Compassion the source code of communication
I have found that until one has compassion for someone, communication, and consequent connection is difficult. Compassion acts as a tuner/adapter/catalyst to bring foreign objects together.
Jesus was a man of compassion: (Mark 1:41; 6:34; Luk 7:13) 4697. σπλαγχνίζομαι splagchnízomai; fut., splagchnisthḗsomai, pass. deponent from splágchnon (G4698), bowel. To feel deeply or viscerally, to yearn, have compassion, pity. Used in an absolute sense (Matt. 20:34; Mark 1:41; Luke 10:33; 15:20).
Pity, sympathy, empathy or compassion: Which is a godly virtue?
When humans are suffering, they tend to make two demands that are impossible to fulfill simultaneously. On the one hand, they want people to notice the depth of their pain and sorrow — how deep they are in the pit, how unique and tragic their circumstances. At the same time, they don’t want to be made to feel that they really need the assistance of others. In one breath, they say, “Help me! Can’t you see I’m suffering?” and in the next they say, “How dare you act as though I needed you and your help?” The sufferer doesn’t want to be alone, and demands not to be pitied. This makes their emotional turmoil in suffering not only delicious to our taste, but also highly combustible and unpredictable. [3]
Currently some people are fighting on behalf of the poor, demanding an exchange of wealth. This may seem justified the great inequality between 10% – 3,5 million people in south Africa owning 85% of the wealth, and the 17.5 Million (50%) of the population that owns nothing.
The economic fighters are usually very emotional, and violent in their pursuit. This is a great deception: Get involved with the poor, and becoming their friends is what is needed! More hand-outs are not helping! The poor became poor, because of a disconnectedness! I have found most materially poor people, are actually more connected with God, self, their neighbours and community than the rich! What is needed, is collaboration, connection and cohesion! It is impossible to get this harmony through threats, intimidation! Even getting something is short-lived and not sustainable.
Jesus moved all the way from pity, sympathy, empathy towards an act of compassion!
The most powerful virtue of believers in Christ Jesus is the love of God demonstrated through us in love, giving, generosity, kindness, goodness, mercy and compassion. The enemy is defenceless against the power of God’s LOVE. Conversely, the enemy do what he always does, he perverts God’s provision. One cannot help the broken, hurting, disenfranchised, poor without truth. Speaking the truth in love, and consequent change in actions and modus operandi, is the real deliverance. Spiritually poor people have poor ways. Billions have been wasted feeling sorry, having pity, showing sympathy without coming alongside the victim or the vulnerable, building a discipling, mentorship-kind of reciprocal relationship that demands responsibility and a new upbringing. We need to adopt a humbler posture, a posture that says, “I am broken too on a journey to restoration, let we walk together so you can find healing too.”
Jesus, did not immediately reacted to the urgent request of his close friends, Maria, Martha and Lazarus. (John 11) This family did not need His pity, sympathy, of empathy they need someone who could heal and later resurrect their brother. And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exo 34:6-7) A doctor that is too concerned with a patient’s feelings, is limited to administrate appropriate healing and rehabilitation. Jesus loved the rich man: yet asked him to sell everything he had to follow him. Jesus wanted to free this good upright man, from the entanglement of riches without identity and purpose.
Compassion is an act of LOVE: Forgiving someone’s debt. (Mat 18:27) Clothing, feeding, visiting in prison. (Mat 25:36) Taking a bruised man to hospital and paying for his recovery. (Luke 10:33-34)
Know God through the scriptures
Worldviews, beliefs and perceptions of truth governs our thinking and actions. The spirit-filled believer must constantly be filled with the word, in order that our ways become in frequency with God’s heart. By now, you will understand that all the wisdom revealed thus far is: SCRIPTURAL. We do not think our own thoughts, run after our own notions, inclinations and desires. We purpose our mind, to study the scriptures, meditate on it in order to begin to think and act like God. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. (Joshua 1:8) All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim 3:16) For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. (Heb 4:12-13)
Connect then speak and act.
Solitude, contemplation, listening, silence is invaluable to ensure that one organise your thoughts coherently, originated in the heart of God.
See my father do (Joh 5:19-20, 30)
only His Will (Joh 6:38)
father taught me (Joh 8:28)
father given commandment (Joh 12:49)
Father that dwells in me does the works (Joh 14:10, 24, 31)
whatever He hears He will speak (Joh 16:13)
not My will but thine (Mat 26:39)
May we all grow in depth of understanding of true deep meaningful communication that connects, build bridges and sustain long-standing relationships of trust, respect and reciprocal good-will.
Grace and Peace!
[1] https://www.zazzlemedia.co.uk/blog/digital-content-types/#gref
[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/
[3] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-enticing-sin-of-empathy