my voice the loudest came from the same mouth that ate whatever the world fed me carefully woven make believe dreams of expensive things and sex and power
and my mind drank the pictures of a life that poured from the television until I was completely drunk with them.
and my soul swallowed the lies of a life they talked about in the magazines and on the radio waves until it was completely deluded by them.
all of them told me who I should be and so I willingly agreed and spoke often to myself affirming emptily that I was quite amazing and remarkable and good looking and brilliant and destined for greatness.
listening to my own voice, firmly boasting from the center of the universe - I became the marketing version of myself.
and I have also heard the voice of the enemy.
a nectar-sweet voice softly whispering in my undiscerning ears. lips dripping with poison fangs held back just out of view inside the shadows of my mind
pouring acid on my soul by encouraging me with chemicals to dull my senses
taking brimstone erasers to the line between truth and deception
lighting fires in my life to keep it filled with smoke to choke my eyes and block the light
talking soothingly of lust and power and how I was always right and how the world is flat and black is white.
demons and I held long conversations in dimly lit rooms full of empty shells of people smiling at each other across tables and feigning looks of superiority thinly stretched across lives filled with complete misery
days became months and then years in minutes until the face I saw in the mirror was not mine and the sounds from my throat were a strangers
then on the darkest day in a dirty alley where I lay almost dead I heard another voice.
a true voice with a true message
the voice spoke and the holes in my soul were filled that I never knew were there
that still small voice that forged the Universe with a whisper
told me that He loved me
a song of salvation broke into my broken heart when He told me I was His.
the voice of the One that is, and will be and always was - before the beginning and outside time and space.
I heard His voice standing in the smoldering ashes of a life immutably emblazoned with sin.
and He spoke righteousness into the mouth of a blasphemer the heart of a murderer and the mind of a deceiver
His holy lips took what was charred to the bones blackened with evil and turned it white as snow with a Word.
so now I sit in silence I do not speak. I listen for the voice of the Living God to tell me what to think and feel and where to go and what to do
surrendered willingly and joyfully to the One who sees every path before me and knows the way to my destiny
for the peace He gives by faith is better than anything
and the joy He gives by grace fills a mans heart to lacking nothing
and so I pray for silence for I have no interest in my opinions or the clattering sounds I might make.
instead I close my mouth and strain my ears and I hear love
now the world is round white is white and my life has never been so real
