I wrote an article years ago about the need to increase the volume on our attempts to share the message Jesus Christ has sent us to deliver to this lost, broken, chaotic, and violent world. With crisis situations confronting us in nearly every direction, I think it’s time to issue that appeal again.

Most preachers don’t yell anymore and I’m not advocating for a return to that practice, but I do think we need to take another look at whether our voice is being heard. In so many ways, the Good News that Jesus sent us to declare seems to have been toned down and in some cases, muted entirely.  So, I felt compelled to dust off that post and extend a call to “turn up the volume” one more time.
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Some commercials send me reaching for the remote the moment they come on, and high on my list is when the person on camera starts yelling at me. Apparently, the producers think I’ll be more likely to buy whatever they’re selling if they raise their voices a few decibels. But the fact that it doesn’t work with me doesn’t mean that if, for instance, you saw me about to step within striking distance of a poisonous snake and started yelling at me to prevent me from being bitten, that wouldn’t be a welcome and deeply appreciated intervention. Come to think of it, maybe if I had paid attention and bought some of those products, I’d be looking 20 years younger, have more hair, and be eating food that is crisper, tastier, and done in half the time. 

Shouting Draws Attention ~
Clearly, there’s a wide range of motivations that prompt people to turn up the volume on their voices, but they share a common denominator. The decision to raise our voices is driven by a desire to attract attention. Shouting is simply taking a normal means of expression and making it more difficult to ignore. Sometimes that can be a good thing, and sometimes not so good, like this examples:

• • The adulterous woman Solomon warned about raised her voice to draw attention to herself and ignite lust in her hearers:

In the twilight, in the evening,
In the black and dark night.
And there a woman met him,
With the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart.
She was loud and rebellious,
Her feet would not stay at home. (Proverbs 7:9-11 NKJV)

• • Shouting can add emphasis to an important message. God apparently had that in mind when He commanded Isaiah to turn up the volume on his preaching:

Cry aloud, spare not;
Lift up your voice like a trumpet;
Tell My people their transgression,
And the house of Jacob their sins. (Isaiah 58:1 NKJV)

• • Sometimes powerful internal feelings just won’t allow quiet expression, as one of the lepers Jesus healed demonstrated:

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God. (Luke 17:15 NKJV)

• • Shouting can also be an effective mechanism for directing attention to someone else. The crowd surrounding Jesus on “Palm Sunday” were classic examples of that:

Then, as He was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen. (Luke 19:37 NKJV)

Proponents of attitudes, behaviors, and lifestyles that God condemns seem to be getting louder all the time. They’re also demonstrating that getting louder can mean more than just increasing the auditory volume. It can also mean that there’s a ramped-up level of emotional intensity in the delivery of their message, and maybe a dramatic increase in the ways and number of times their destructive concepts are presented. Every day those holding traditional, Biblical values are being intimidated, mocked, and shouted down. Followers of Jesus are being silenced in more ways than we ever imagined.

Shouting Isn’t Just Vocal ~
Yelling by itself won’t make the Gospel more believable and reverting to those days when churches didn’t have sound systems. There are better ways to deliver a message that makes them hard to ignore. After all, Jesus didn’t have a megaphone to blare out a message about compassion, but Mark reminds us that He had something better (Mark 1:40-45). 

On a dusty street in a nondescript Judean town, a socially isolated, medically hopeless, and spiritually unclean leper knelt at Jesus’ feet begging for help. Jesus didn’t raise His voice and shout out a message of hope. He spoke only a handful of words, but as He reached out His hand to touch the untouchable, heal the incurable, and love the unlovable, the heavens reverberated with the message of love that transcends every human boundary.

Demonstrations Can Be Thunderous ~
Shouting is often used to express praise and adoration, but acts of worship don’t necessarily need voices for their impact to be loud. Luke records an event in which  the shouting was visual, not vocal (Luke 7:36-48). The woman in the story almost certainly didn’t utter a word as she slipped into the room where Jesus was. She silently slipped in behind Him, took a bottle of expensive perfume, and anointed Jesus’ feet. As tears of gratitude dripped from her eyes, she used them to wash His feet. There was no noise or fanfare as she dried them with her hair, but the sound of her adoration has been heard around the world for more than 2,000 years.

Another unnamed, desperate woman quietly fought her way through an inconsiderate crowd that was pushing and shoving in an effort to get close to Jesus (Matthew 9:20-26). No one could tell that she had two struggles going on. The crowd pressing against her on the outside was nothing compared to the wrestling match going on underneath. Fear and doubt shouted that her fantasy of healing was never going to happen. But hope and faith shouted louder and declared that Jesus could make the impossible possible. No one saw her trembling hand as it reached out to brush the edge of His garment. As far as we know, no verbal shouts were raised by or about her that day, but the power of hope and faith has overcome the noise of doubt and confusion in every generation since.

We don’t need to get into a shouting match with our spiritual adversaries. Jesus equipped us with a much more effective alternative. He sent His Spirit to live within us and to grant us the courage not only to make our faith known verbally, but to enable us to love louder than the world can hate: 

• • We can turn up the volume on our hope until it overcomes the noise of anxiety and despair. 
  • We can apply truth in ways that shout down the devil’s deceptive lies. 
  • We can crank up the sound of compassion until it drowns out selfishness and greed. 

The Holy Spirit equips us to believe with such intense confidence that impossible things happen. The Gospel gets loud when we live it out in real life, and as all of us know, when things get loud, people start paying attention.

“TWEETABLES” ~ Click to Tweet & Share from the pull quotes below. Each quote links directly to this article through Twitter.

• • • “As Jesus reached out His hand to touch the untouchable and heal the incurable, the heavens reverberated with the message of love that transcends every human boundary.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
    • As tears of gratitude dripped from her eyes, she knelt at (Jesus’) feet and used her tears to wash His feet, drying them with her hair . . . The sound of adoration continues to thunder across the world more than 2,000 years later.  @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet) 
    • Jesus taught us how to love louder than the world can hate. He showed us that we can turn up the volume on our hope until it overcomes the noise of anxiety and despair.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
    • The Holy Spirit equips us to believe with such intense confidence that impossible things happen. The gospel gets loud when we live it out in real life, and all of us know that when things get loud, people start paying attention.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)

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