Read an Excerpt

Introduction, pg. 1

Words have tremendous power. When used effectively they have the ability to sway nations, captivate hearts, stir warriors to great valor and take us on journeys of deep and lasting emotion. This is God's design.

Indeed, God called his son Jesus, the greatest force for change in all history, The Word. In short, words have the power to change us. From the beginning God had in mind a deep communication with his beloved creation, a communication so intimate that its end result would be the dispensing of God himself, through Christ, into you and me.

To that end throughout Scripture, the Lord introduces us to wondrous words, full of meaning and carrying an invitation to realms of experience found only in the depths of God himself; words like Life; the Kingdom; the heavens; the Word of God; the Mystery; the Church; and the Spirit. These profound words were designed to change us. But do they?

It is my contention that the power these words have to show us the way to intimate fellowship with God has largely been lost. They have become so commonplace in our Christian vocabulary that we assume we have plumbed their depths. We sing them, pray them, and use them every day without taking the time to explore them.

For us to gain a deep understanding of these words is a threat to God’s enemy, because of their power to invigorate our communication with God. God’s enemy has a fixed interest in stripping that power away. In fact there is an unrelenting tendency for the precious storehouse of our Christian vocabulary to be watered down and ultimately stripped of its deep meaning by our culture, by our enemy and even by the religious establishment itself. The fact is that as our precious God-spoken words are co-opted by the world around us, the realm of experience they represent becomes nothing more than a faint memory or a distant hope.