DUMB PHONE GOSPEL
Reading Scripture used to feel like an obligation. Not an encounter.
I’d read John 3:16 and walk away with more anxiety than I arrived with. “Whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” In English, “believe” is a mental agreement. So I either intellectually arrive at the correct conclusion — or I don’t. And if I can’t quite get there, I’m apparently going to hell.
That’s not Good News.
But the word in Greek isn’t “believe.” It’s pisteuo. And pisteuo means to trust. To entrust. To put your full weight on something. The opposite of pisteuo in the original text isn’t “not believing.” It’s apeitheo — disobedience. Non-surrender.
To truly believe is to let go.
One word. Completely different God.
The first version has me trying to mentally maneuver my way out of hell. The second is an invitation to stop white-knuckling my life and fall into the only thing that will actually hold me.
And then there’s the word “saved.” The Greek word is sozo. It means to rescue. To heal. To restore to wholeness. To put back on your feet. The same word Jesus uses when he heals someone physically. Sozo is God saying I don’t just want to get you into heaven. I want to make you whole. Right now. In this body. In this mess.
That’s a different offer entirely.
And it matters because trusting that God actually loves you is hard — especially if most of the love you’ve experienced has come with strings attached. Most people have been told someone has their best interest at heart, only to find out it was just manipulation wearing a smile.
Agape love — the love God has for you — is the rare kind. Others-first. Costly. The kind that gives rather than takes.
Which brings us to the cross. My God is not a far-off deity demanding a sacrifice. My God is a close and personal friend who is the sacrifice. He put on skin. Suffered emotionally, spiritually, physically. It actually cost Him something. That’s not a transaction. That’s the most extravagant act of love in human history — and the English language barely scratches the surface of it.
English is like a dumb phone.
It makes calls, sends texts, gets the job done. But it has no depth, no texture, no ability to carry the weight of what these words were actually trying to say.
If you’re showing up to seek God— reading, seeking, genuinely wanting more — but it still feels flat or worse, terrifying — you might not be the problem. The language might be failing you, not God.
The point is the thing being described. Encounter. Relationship. The disorienting reality of a God who refuses to stay theoretical.
Language points to that.
It is not that.
Here is what helps me;
Slow your reading down. When a word sticks out — or makes you uncomfortable, or feels inconsistent with the God you’re coming to know — don’t move past it. Take that word and break it down. A concordance like Blue Letter Bible will show you the original Hebrew or Greek, how the word has been used elsewhere in Scripture, and what it was meant to carry. AI tools can go even further — unpacking the cultural context, the word picture behind the language, even surfacing how teachers and theologians throughout history have wrestled with the same passage.
You might be surprised how many brilliant minds have been sitting with the same discomfort you are — and what they found when they dug past the English.
Then ask not what the text means — but what picture it’s trying to paint.
The words got thinner.
The Love behind them didn’t.
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I offer Positioning Prayer and Spiritual Direction — one-on-one sessions by Zoom that create space for you to encounter God. No advice. No middleman. No formulas. Just you and God, with someone to help you lean in.
These sessions are free. Not free-with-an-asterisk. Just free. This ministry runs on the generosity of donors who believe you deserve access to God regardless of what you can pay.
I don’t want something from you. I want something for you.