A wise man hears and will increase learning, and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels; to understand a proverb and the interpretation; the words of the wise and their dark sayings. (Proverbs 1:5-6)[12]

‘Tell me a story!’ This is the cry of children all over the world. Jesus did not come to provide people with the scientific formulae by which His Father created the universe. He came to call sinners to repentance, to heal the sick, to restore the broken hearted . . . and to tell stories. What better medium can there be for conveying truth?

Zefirelli’s production of Jesus of Nazareth made such an impression on me because of the way he portrayed Jesus telling His parables. These well known stories integrate precious truths about the reality of the heavenly Kingdom with the world his hearers were entirely familiar with. Through them, Jesus showed His Father’s concern for everything that is lost: coins, son and sheep alike. In the process, He opened up a parallel new world to His hearers.

Simply telling them the eternal ‘facts of the matter,’ for example in a series of theological statements, could never have had the same impact.

Jesus taught the crowds about the Kingdom of Heaven almost exclusively by means of parables, but He explained their meaning afterwards to His disciples. Privately. Parables were thus both a helpful teaching aid and a fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy: ‘I will open My mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from old.’[13]

A parable talks about one subject (such as fish, or a lost sheep) but its real meaning lies elsewhere. We need the key that enables us to understand this type of teaching.

Did you wonder what the reference to ‘riddles’ in Numbers 12:8 had to do with discerning the Still Small Voice? More, perhaps, than we might imagine. John and Paula Sandford do a splendid job in their books of making sense of the less direct ways in which God speaks to us, which they call ‘dark speech,’ or ‘dark sayings.’[14]

At its simplest, dark speech occurs when we think God is saying one thing to us, only to find out later that He was actually speaking about something rather different. You may well have experienced this already – for example if you felt the Lord telling you to go and visit someone, only to find that they were out. Because you were on the move, you were in the right place to meet someone else. It is clear in retrospect that this was what the Lord intended al along, but it can be puzzling at the time.

Similarly, the Lord does not always rebuke us openly, but allows circumstances to work out in such a way as to bring us to a clearer understanding of a situation, and hence to our need of repentance. The more alert our spirits are, the quicker we will be at picking up on the ‘double entendres’ the Lord ‘encodes’ in the words that people (usually quite unwittingly) say to us. He also uses the hard lessons we learn, when we fail to think through consequences ahead of time, and insist on driving through red lights.

Intelligence work consists of painstakingly assembling apparently unrelated pieces of information, rather than of the shoot-outs beloved by the movie makers. We likewise will often have to ‘unravel’ the different pointers God gives us, in order to make sense of what He is saying. They are pieces of a jigsaw and pointers in a treasure hunt rather than full-page printouts of ‘answers from heaven.’

The Hebrew word chidah – ‘dark speech’ or ‘dark saying’ – literally means a ‘knot.’ There is nothing second best about indirect speech; it is simply part of the way by which the Lord keeps us humble and dependent. If we knew too much in advance, or could always be sure of hearing correctly, pride would puff us up and lead us astray.

In all this, the Lord wants us to become partners with Him through the discoveries we make on the way. He points our thoughts and prayers in a certain direction, and then looks for us to act on what He is showing us.

Sometimes we strive too hard to find a literal interpretation for some vision or dream we have received when it is the general thrust of the revelation that matters, rather than the specific details. When God gave Paul a vision of a Macedonian man calling to him across the water, it could be argued that the ‘man’ was actually Lydia! The important thing is that the mission changed direction and headed for Macedonia.[15]

At other times we can become too fixed on what we (mistakenly) believe the Lord has said. A friend rang a couple of months ago, utterly preoccupied with a long-standing feeling that the Lord wanted her to marry a particular man. So far as I could tell, his interest in her appeared to have waned past any reasonable hope of recovery. The impression I had was that she was desperately trying to find some way through the maze to reach the prize of marriage.

Children’s puzzles – such as ‘Help the frog find its way through the maze to the pond’ – are often easier to solve if you start at the opposite end and work your way backwards. I tried doing the same by looking at this from a different angle, urging her to consider not whether God was saying it but what it would be like actually to be married to him. She had to admit that on both past and present form, he would not be the kind and compassionate person that she needed.

The spell began to unravel. Two months on, she feels free and ‘clear’ again.

For Reflection and Prayer

I would have you all speak with tongues. (1 Corinthians 14:5)

The gift of tongues is itself a form of dark speech. We use it to build ourselves up without knowing precisely which mysteries we are proclaiming, or who we are praying for. Let us not take this precious gift for granted![16]

I have known at least three occasions when a tongues has been given in a recognizable language. On several occasions the Lord gave me a series of revelations in a dialect of Farsi, which an Iranian friend was able to translate.

This provided powerful and important confirmation concerning the message the Lord had given me, to share with the wider Body of Christ concerning the grief and anger in God’s heart at the way the Church is allowing trivia and syncretism to blunt our cutting edge.[17] As a result, our nations are wide open to many opposing and dangerous spiritual forces. We shall be exploring this message in more detail in the sequel to this volume, Led by the Spirit.

On the second occasion, when my daughter was eleven, she prayed for someone in Tanzania, who received a special gift – the ability to speak in English! I shall be referring in chapter Six - The Power of Discernment - to the occasion when a friend prayed in an exquisitely beautiful medieval language, and brought precious insights concerning our sojourn in Shetland.

For Reflection and Prayer

I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on Him. (John 1:32)

Long before I consciously opened my heart to the Lord Jesus, I experienced a strong sense of His presence ‘knocking on the door of my heart’ every time Aslan made an appearance in The Chronicles of Narnia. I still do so to this day. These wonderful stories ‘work’ as well for grown ups as for children.

We have seen that Jesus taught consistently through images. In our utilitarian world, C.S. Lewis reminds us of the power that myths and symbols have to portray the deepest aspects of truth. Many people today have become cut off from this way of learning – although the widespread popularity of symbol-laden fantasy games show that people are seeking to bridge this dimly perceived rift between head and heart.

May the Lord lead us to the reality of our missing symbols: of what it means to be a man, a woman, a family, a friend, a church, and so on.

As we bring as much of ourselves as we can to as much of God as we understand, may He bridge the gap and draw us to particular areas of service. Some will feel called to pray especially for the suffering church, others to take the gospel to remote tribes, still others to address areas of injustice. God may well use specific signs, symbols and pointers to confirm and develop these callings.

It is as unwise to go overboard on the matter of outward signs, as it is to ignore the possibility that the Lord may be speaking through them. People suffering from stiff necks are not automatically stubborn. The Lord spoke recently, however, that one person’s damaged spine and incapacitated legs were a sign that he was no longer fulfilling the Lord’s plan – which was to share the love of the Head (the Lord Jesus) with the Body (the Church). When he resumed his ministry, his physical problems greatly improved.

For Reflection and Prayer

Where is our listening to be worked out? Often, it will be in the place where we work. Many Christians feel guilty about their work, however, because they are not ‘full time’ for the Lord. It works the other way round, of course. Many Christian workers feel guilty because they are not doing a regular nine-to-five job. The devil does not miss a trick!

Spiritual distinctions are rarely as clear as I may have made it appear in this chapter. The boundaries between direct and indirect speech are by no means ‘carved in stone;’ they weave in and out of each other, often hovering between the crystal clear and the highly fragmentary. In this section, in which I shall be giving the briefest of overviews of how the Lord developed Ros’s calling as a midwife, we will see God speaking clearly about ‘professional’ matters.

As she came towards the end of her midwifery training, Rosalind applied for a job in Chester, where I was already living. We were married just two days after her final exams. Towards the end of out honeymoon, I felt a nudge to cut our holiday short. It was just a simple sense in my heart – no big deal, and therefore quite difficult to ‘grade.’

Ros and I often play a grading game, whereby we express how clearly we think we have heard something. ‘A’ grade means ‘Please take this seriously. I really think I have heard from the Lord, unless you feel that I’m mistaken.’ ‘C’ or ‘D’ grade may mean nothing more than ‘I have had this passing thought . . .’

There is nothing in the least infallible about this attempt to grade our nudges, but it does help us to convey how seriously we fell we need to take an issue.

Even though we had no ‘second strand’ to confirm this change of direction, we returned home three days ahead of schedule. There on the doormat was a letter, inviting Ros for an interview the following morning. In the light of the way the Lord subsequently developed her midwifery ministry, we can only marvel at the lengths He went to in order to bring us back in time for that interview. She turned out to be the last midwife from outside the county to be appointed for nearly a decade!

Two years later, Ros laid down her career to have our first-born. When Ruth was nearly a year old, however, the Lord tapped Ros on the shoulder and told her that He still had work for her to do as a midwife. At the same time, He asked me to support her fully in this venture.

From the moment Ros returned to work, it felt entirely different. Midwifery had now become a calling, rather than just a career. Many times she sensed the Lord’s prompting to pray with mothers during labour, or just after they had given birth.

Women are more open to God when they experience the miracle of giving birth than perhaps they will ever be at any other moment in their lives – and they never forget ‘the midwife who cared enough to pray with them.’ On at least two occasions, Ros prayed for babied who had stopped breathing. Both began to breathe again, without any ill effects.

In the late 1980’s the Lord led us to Shropshire. He confirmed that midwifery would be central to our calling, and when He gave us a house next door to a small maternity unit, we drew the obvious conclusion. We looked forward to Ros working there and maybe even coming home for lunch. Her application was rejected, however, because she was considered over qualified to work in the unit. In any case, they preferred to appoint people who had trained locally.

The Lord had given us His promise – and we needed the employment. The gap felt acute! It was at this critical juncture that the presence of the Lord came so powerfully on Ros that she literally shook. There and then He called her to set up as an independent midwife.

The Lord went to great lengths to open the door to make this calling a success. For over a decade she became the James Herriot of the midwifery world, with many a moonlit delivery up remote farm tracks. It brought her close to many families who were heavily involved in the New Age and occult, in a way that could never have happened by more conventional routes.[18]

On one occasion, Ros was attending a conference on the west coast of America, at which were present many lesbians and alternative practitioners. As one particular seminar progressed, ‘The Psychology of Fear on Childbirth,’ the atmosphere became heavier and heavier, as more and more horror stories were told of the devastating effects the litigation-driven culture is having on American midwives.

It was at this point that the Lord told Ros to take the microphone and release faith into the meeting. A prolonged argument ensued, which the Lord won by reminding her that within a few days she would be on a plane and heading back to the UK. Ros plucked up courage and did as the Lord had bidden her. Pandemonium broke out immediately (or was it a mini revival?) One lady shouted out, ‘Why does that woman refer to God as a man, propping up the male patriarchal system?’ She was subsequently counselled for salvation at the end of the evening. A prominent birth photographer also gave her heart to the Lord that day, and was discipled for a year by one of the Christian midwives.

Several other midwives got to their feet and testified that the Lord was with them, and how their hands were His hands to welcome babies into the world. We continued to enjoy close relationships with American midwives for many years as the result of Ros having the courage to follow the Lord’s leading.

One of the morals we can draw from this episode is the need to keep pushing in prayer. Pray Until Something Happens!

For Reflection and Prayer