The Alpha of Communication

Uv2977/10000 The Alpha of Communication
Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.
Colossians 4 v 6
The Lord God gives a lot of priority or importance to wholesome communication for He brought into being all of creation by His word. The single most important cause of human joy as well as misery is speech. Like the prophet Isaiah confessed, “ We are people of unclean lips.” We need a divine teaching, divine touching and training in righteous speech for our lips are naturally prone to lies, prone to using negative words, prone to foul language, prone to boastfulness and conceit, prone to give expression to anger, insults, retorts. Like a bit is used to control a powerful horse and make it go in the direction and speed the rider wants, so also we need to put the Word as a bit in our mouths to make our powerful but uncontrollable tongues take our lives in the right direction and pace. We need to train our tongues to take the negativity or power of death out of our mouths, tongues, hearts and lives and to be covered with positivity or the power of life. When I was in primary school, the class teacher would literally produce a soap for a student to wash his mouth if he happened to use a bad word or profanity or curse. We should constantly and daily wash our tongues with the Word and its alpha power or the power of God would be released to cleanse and make our mouths and tongues and vocal chords to act in unison with our hearts and minds to be agents of encouragement, edification, healing, deliverance and wisdom.

A young dance trainer came to invite me recently for a classical dance recital by her students. When I asked her the duration and process of the training her students went through, she replied that they first learn the alphabets of dancing- the various basics, gestures and movements before they master the nuances of language or dance proper. Likewise, on every aspect of life, the Word of God contains the alphabet or basics of that aspect. For instance, on communication, there are more than forty verses in scripture which includes admonitions, exhortations, models, guidelines, precepts, principles, promises, proverbs. When we refer to the Alpha of communication, we are speaking of the essence of these forty verses on good communication vide scripture.

In the above uni-verse, it asks us to ensure that our speech is _always_ gracious. Not sometimes or often but always. How do we do it? By training in righteous speech with the aid of the Word of God. The Word is the salt that makes our words tasty or gracious. The Word is the salt that enables us to use our words to preserve and promote peace and goodwill among men. The Word disinfects our tongues and speech of all that contaminates our lives. Our learning the alphabet of communication from the Word will enable us to apply the language of grace in all situations at all times or Omega- the completion or mastery of communication.

The Alpha of Dealing with Criticism

UV2966/10000 The Alpha of Dealing with Criticism
Who whet their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words:
Psalm 64 v 3

The human tongue is like a sword. The Word is also a sword. But the former is a life-taking sword if it is used only to criticise, demean, insult others, speak lies and abuse others. The latter is a life-giving sword. People sharpen their tongues with their intellect, their wits in order to use their tongues like a deadly sword. The untamed tongue is also a bow from which words are shot like arrows to hurt the hearts of others. The way to tame our tongues is to use the life-giving sword, the Alpha of the Word to blunt the rough edges of our tongues and make it smooth and powerful in building people up instead of pulling them down.

But how do we deal with people with untamed tongues? Do we turn a deaf ear to them or do we refuse to engage with such critical people? If there is an element of truth in the arrows they fire at us, we can learn from it. We can extract from their words whatever we find good, useful, constructive in their words even if the intent is to hurt or insult or humiliate us. We need to also discern the spirit or purpose behind the words. We need to be confident in our faith in the promise of the Lord that no tongue can stand in judgement against us. Since we are servants of the Lord and we make our tongues and limbs and minds to serve the Lord, we are subject only to the judgement of the Lord. Having said that, we can take feedback from the words of others to us.

We can emulate the example of Jesus. He faced criticism from the authorities of the day, criticism from the religious leaders of the day, criticism from common people and even from His own followers. But He faced it all with grace and answering all the critical questions and comments of different people with equanimity and even love. He did speak some hard words against the Pharisees. We too should not slink away from being truthful and speaking it when the situation warranted it. St James taught that the human tongue is naturally untameable. But with the grace of Jesus and the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit to tame our tongues so that we are neither hypocritical nor hyper critical. Our tongues according to St James is a rudder of our lives. Like a rudder, we need to balance our tongues so that we are neither sugar coating and glossing over the truth in order to be popular or to stay out of trouble with people or are we going around like a sharp open razor cutting people with whom we interact. A good way to avoid being over sensitive to the words of criticism or negative words of others and over critical on our part is to run the words we hear as well as the words we speak through several filters of questions like – is it true, is it necessary, is it timely or the right occasion, does it please the Lord, is it helpful or harmful to us, to others or to our relationships and prospects? These filters act as safety catches on our word-emotion triggers that work in us either as listeners or as speakers.

The Alpha of Dealing with Curses

UV 2965/10000 The Alpha of Dealing with Curses

However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord, your God loves you.

Deuteronomy 23 v 5

Just as God turned the cross on which Jesus was crucified into a source of redemption and salvation of all mankind so that instead of death smiling on us, we can smile on death, so also the Lord God has turned our curses into blessings, our weaknesses into strengths, our sorrows into joys, our failures into success. He turns our mourning into joy as written by the Psalmist David. Our ‘”hamartia” or tragic shortcomings are turned into “hyperbole” or the abundance of blessing of the Lord that comes out of His heart overflowing with love towards His own who believe and acknowledge Him in all their ways, from Alpha to the Omega of their lives.

Curses are the natural consequence of sin. Death, disease and decay became inevitable in the course of nature and human life. Christ turned our sin into “win” on the cross. He was judged by Pilate under Roman law and the Israelites under Hebraic law, the law of Moses as a blasphemer deserving of vilest form of cruelty-nailed and hung till death on two wooden pieces. He who is the source of all blessing was deemed a curse on behalf of all mankind, the consequences of all our sinful deeds and words rested on Him. Jesus by His resurrection negated judgement on all mankind who chose to believe in this act of redemption. He negated all curses for all time to come.

The negativities that assail us in our lives are often necessary to realize and experience the positivity of God’s love. In place of our sin and curses, God pours in His grace even as the Good Samaritan poured in the oil and the wine onto the wounds of the victim of wayside robbery. Likewise, while we are on the way in our journey of life, we encounter many setbacks. The Lord enables us to bounce back from these setbacks with a new sense of the reality of His love towards us. When our adversaries curse us in their hearts or openly, the Lord takes those curses and turns it into blessings as Balaam’s curses on Israel were turned into blessings. Even generational curses like childlessness, a particular hereditary disease, indebtedness, divorce happening in succeeding generations etc that come from our ancestors due to certain choices or deeds or commitments made knowingly or unwittingly by them have no power over us. The Alpha or Word of God and the redemptive power of the shed blood of Jesus breaks the power of these generational curses once we claim this promise of God contained in this uni-verse.

The Alpha of Conduct

UV 2964/10000 The Alpha of Conduct

Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel
Philippians 1 v 27

The word conversation in the uni-verse above is translated in modern versions of the Bible as “conduct.” Our conduct should be worthy of the good news that Jesus took away our sin and made us blemishless in the sight of God. Since we have so received the grace of God, we should reflect the grace of God in our speech and in our conduct. Since we are united in spirit into one body, the body cannot have more than one heart or one mind. We are to reflect the heart and mind of Christ in our daily lives. This is our reciprocal sacrifice back to Christ to offer our lives as a sacrifice that pleases Him. Our witness for Him therefore is not just verbal but non- verbal, too. Our thoughts, words and actions as well as reactions need to be pleasing to the Lord.

Once we have received the Alpha or the good root of faith in Christ our Saviour and Lord into our hearts, it should affect all aspects of our lives- or our Omega- 360 degrees of our conduct and all of our affairs. When people see us approaching, they should not say to themselves based on past experience, “Here comes bad news” , but instead they should think, “Here comes good news.” Here comes someone who has peace with God, peace with others and peace with self. Here comes someone who has faith in his heart, love in his actions and words and hope in his mind. As messengers of good news, our conduct should be a reflection of the love, grace and wisdom of Jesus just as a postman has to don the uniform of his department to be identified as one authorised to deliver important messages to everyone.

Our motives need to be pure. Our words should be run through several filters before we utter these. Our actions and reactions should not shame or hurt Jesus or the Holy Spirit in any way. If we follow the principles taught by Jesus in our daily conduct, people who are watching or listening to us will see a consistency in our lives. They will know that while it can be predicted that we would not engage with what is evil, the good that we do and can do is not exactly predictable. They will know that our behaviour is not accidental or sheer chance but produced by the churning of the Holy Spirit and the Word in our lives. They will know that our commitment to God rules our horizontal relationships with man.

The Alpha of Celebration

UV 2963/10000 The Alpha of Celebration
It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found
Luke 15 v 32

The sacrifices under the Old Covenant are the foreshadow of the greatest sacrifice of Jesus on the cross that obviated the need for further sacrifices. The festivals of the Old Covenant like the Festival of Passover or of the Tabernacles are the foreshadow of the ongoing celebration in the life of the one who has been made alive spiritually by and in Christ Jesus. No further are we to clothe ourselves in ashes and sackcloth or mourn our dead past but live in the fullness and abundance of the life now provided to us by the grace and mercy of the Lord. In short, we are to be glad and celebrate like the father of the prodigal who had mourned his lost son for years but the moment he saw him return, he knew it was time to be glad and to celebrate again. To celebrate means to be glad internally for some reason, to share the joy with others, to manifest it in some physical way like singing, dancing, dining, laughing.


Jesus feasted often as per the record of the four gospels. He ended His earthly sojourn also appropriately with the Last Supper in the upper room with the disciples. We too are to celebrate the abundance of His love and mercy. We are to be glad in His presence every day of our lives hereafter. We are to offer praise and thanksgiving from our hearts to the Lord for so amazing a free gift as salvation or eternal life in Christ. We are to sing or hum along, if you like me are a poor singer, songs of praise. We are to invite guests to our homes and host dinners and meetings to celebrate the goodness of the Lord towards us. We are to share our blessings with others in terms of gifts to the poor, charity to the needy among us. We are to celebrate not just birthdays and anniversaries but every day, every happy occasion, every occasion we remember a great deliverance of the Lord as I remember how the Lord delivered me from two near death experiences. In so doing, we are setting up joyful milestones or fiestas or happy memorials all along our journey of life or what remains of it. We can set up our own personal or family festivals. The concept of a personal festival is that every day, we can ask ourselves- what do I want to celebrate today for the Lord? The Holy Spirit will give the answer- celebrate His wisdom, or celebrate His love, celebrate His grace towards you, celebrate His mercy, celebrate His peace, celebrate His gentleness, celebrate His faithfulness, celebrate His truthfulness.
As Christ has wiped every tear and removed every fear from our lives, we are to look on our new lives as a continual celebration. We are no longer to perceive life as either half full or half empty but to perceive that we are living in the overflow of His love, goodness and mercy. Every day we can find some new reason and way to celebrate a new mercy of the Lord towards us, a new sign of His goodness, a new experience or revelation of His grace. We are not to be bored and listless but full of gladness and everlasting joy. Our gladness is due to our current state of blessedness in the presence of the Lord while our everlasting joy is born out of our sure hope of eternal life in Christ.

The Alpha of Courage

UV 2962/10000 The Alpha of Courage
Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

Deuteronomy 31 v 6

Even if our strength fails us, if our courage remains we can emerge from any situation victorious. Courage, going by its etymology, comes from the root “couer”, the French word for heart. It is the strength of heart. If the strength of a person is the bow, the string with which every arrow of intention and action is released is our courage. Ours is a faith-inspired courage. It is a Christ-inspired courage. If Christ could conquer the weakness of human flesh with His strength and courage, we too can be conquerors in the realm of the spirit. We draw our courage from the fact that the Lord our God is present with us, that He will go with us wherever we go, that He will never fail us or forsake us.

We have courage as the Lord has spoken the word or Alpha to us to remove the bad root of fear and replace it with the good root of faith and courage. The Lord asks us not to fear not because there is nothing to fear in this life or the next but as He is with us. He will help us deal victoriously with every fear, every threat, every enemy, every foe, every risk and danger. Our courage is not based on our physical, intellectual, emotional or spiritual strength but on our relationship with the Lord. Yes, there are formidable enemies that cannot be wished away, there is the threat of perishing at their hands. There is a threat of failure, the threat of defeat, the threat of death, of loss, of shame, of pain. Even conquerors will shrink at the thought of their own deaths but Christ has made us more than conquerors. He has tasted death so that we will fear death no more. He heals His followers and the faithful of all types of afflictions.

It is clear that what we are talking about here is not mere physical courage- the courage to face physical threats and dangers that a fireman or a policeman or a soldier exhibits by virtue of their profession and training. It is not intellectual courage – the courage to speak the truth, to write what might offend the powerful- the courage characteristic of writers, activists, reformers. It is spiritual courage to remain undaunted in the face of all types of odds against us in life. Spiritual courage comes from strengthening oneself by feeding on the good root of the Word. It comes from hours spent in fervent prayer. It comes from remembering all the previous occasions, the Lord has helped us deal with our various fears and threats. Daniel and his three companions in exile in ancient Babylon exhibited such spiritual courage. Joseph is another model of spiritual courage even as David faced the challenge of Goliath boldly. The disciples who were initially terrified after the death of Jesus were also transformed to be bold apostles for the resurrected Christ.

The Alpha of Citizenship

UV 2961/10000 The Alpha of Citizenship
And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born
Acts 22 v 28
Roman citizenship could be obtained either by payment of a large sum of money or by virtue of birth. Paul was a Roman citizen by birth while the commander who had him chained had paid a large sum to obtain citizenship or the status of being a free man with all rights and the duty to fulfil all obligations of a citizen. Likewise, Christ had paid a huge price for our citizenship of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. We are no longer bond men but citizens by re-birth of faith. We now enjoy the privilege of fellowship with the Almighty and Triune God. We can live in the overflow of His love, power and grace. Christ has tasted death for every man who believes and set us free from the chains of sin, guilt, death and judgement. Being conscious of the huge price paid by Christ for our freedom and citizenship of heaven makes us responsible and grateful.

All humans are born in the chains of sin, death, disease, curses but the Lord Jesus as the Commander –in-chief of our lives has ordered us to be set free. We are citizens of heaven and strangers and pilgrims in this world. We obey a higher law- the law of Jesus summed up in the two greatest commands in which inhere all the laws and tenets of Moses. The laws of the Lord are written in our hearts and minds. We are possessed of a different spirit- the spirit of excellence. We are dead to the world and its lusts. The joy of the Lord or that which He delights in is our chief joy and source of strength and power. Our belief in Christ re-orients every aspect of our lives, the very purpose of our existence. It impacts our relationships and our decisions. We look for help not among the elite or the rulers of our countries but to the Maker of heaven and earth. Our vision is global. We pray globally and act locally to solve local problems, to improve the lot of our fellow beings.

We also owe it to the Lord to try to set as many people free from their chains and usher them into the freedom of citizenship of the kingdom of God. As believers of Christ, we have a dual citizenship. We are natural citizens of the country in which we are born, live and work and owe herr our loyalty, our duty to obey her laws. We are supernatural citizens of the kingdom of heaven. As citizens of heaven, our focus is not on consuming goods and services but in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.