{"id":5480,"date":"2023-01-13T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-14T00:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5480"},"modified":"2023-01-09T17:24:41","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T00:24:41","slug":"the-power-of-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5480","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Communication"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s Friday 13th! I’ve written about it before<\/a>, so I won’t do so today. Hope you’ve had a good day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe Friday 13th weekend is a good time to talk about the Tower of Babel as described in Genesis 11.1 – 9<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first lesson, interestingly enough, is positive: the power of communication:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Yahweh said, \u201cBehold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they have begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. (Genesis 11.6, LSB)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNothing they purpose to do will be impossible for them\u201d if they\u2019re unified, speaking the same language. Often that\u2019s not the case. In churches, for example, words are thrown around: \u201cdiscipleship,\u201d for example. Everyone is in favor of it, but few know what it means. That\u2019s why when my Navigator friends begin to help a church create a culture of discipleship, one of the first steps is \u201cpicture of a disciple.\u201d Do we know what we\u2019re trying to produce? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To one church leader, a disciple is someone who comes to church regularly and behaves \u201cnicely.\u201d To another, a disciple is deep into Bible study. I just saw a church website in which \u201cdisciple\u201d wasn\u2019t used, but they wanted to make a difference in \u201cstructural racism\u201d and \u201csystemic poverty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All good causes, but if we\u2019re not unified around what we\u2019re trying to do, it\u2019s highly unlikely we will succeed – whatever \u201csuccess\u201d is. The people of Genesis 11 knew what they were trying to do and why:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they said, \u201cCome, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.\u201d (Genesis 11.4, LSB)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, according to God himself, they would have succeeded, unless God intervened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomorrow, we\u2019ll remind ourselves why God intervened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For if the trumpet produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle? (1 Corinthians 14.8, LSB)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Friday 13th! I’ve written about it before, so I won’t do so today. Hope you’ve had a good day. Maybe Friday 13th weekend is a good time to talk about the Tower of Babel as described in Genesis 11.1 – 9. The first lesson, interestingly enough, is positive: the power of communication: And Yahweh … Continue reading The Power of Communication<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-1qo","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5481,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5480\/revisions\/5481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}