Communication

The second highest group of God references involved Communication, with 198 references. For this group, I included any God reference that was involved in communication of some kind, whether God initiated the interaction or the participants communicated in some way with God. This was one of two categories in which the activated and passivated

references were nearly equal in number. When participants activated God as the

communicator, they typically used verbs such as say (Abby, #4, line 70), show (Helen, #4, line 18), call (Josefina, #1, line 48), and the verb phrase put on my heart (Kirk, #2, line 50). When they passivated God as the one being communicated with, they used verbs like talk, pray, praise, and worship most frequently, as well as other phrases such as message from the Lord (Kirk, #2, line 50), acknowledge the Lord (Kris, #2, line 174), and interaction with God (Marci, #2, line 190). These examples are listed in Table 5.4.

Table 5.4 Communication examples of activation and passivation Communication

Activated Passivated

“What does God wanna say to me through this?”

(Abby, #4, line 70)

“It was nice to have that release in worshipping God.”

(Haley, #2, line 212) “But I think God’s really been showing

me that it’s important to treasure your friends…”

“It’s harder to have a message that really is from the Lord.”

(Helen, #4, line 18)

“I just felt like God was calling me [up to the altar].”

(Josefina, #1, line 48)

“I can acknowledge the Lord in all my situations.”

(Kris, #2, line 174) “The Lord’s put this on my heart.”

(Kirk, #2, line 50)

“I have to be careful that I don’t lose the interaction with God [while interacting with others].”

(Marci, #2, line 190)

The Communication group acts as an extension of the Relationship group in that the participants discussed their interaction with God as one way of further defining or explaining their relationship with God (Luhrman, 2012). However, while the Relationship and Presence references illustrate God as a friend, the Communication references portray God more as an authoritative figure. The participants were open about the kind of communication God provided as activated social actor, commonly using the kind of communicative verbs, which might be associated with an authoritative teacher or parent. For example, Jeannie stated, “I felt like God was telling me to go to IWU” (#1, line 54) instead of her other choice of university. Maddie recalled her early adolescence when “God worked with [her] and taught [her] a lot” (#1, line 122) about her young faith. Kirk mentioned how during one of the fall chapel services, “God confirmed” His plan for Kirk to be involved in a revival somehow (#2, line 102). At that point, he did not know the end result, but he believed that God

communicated this part of the plan to him.

Some participants clearly viewed God communicating to them via the Bible, still as the activated social actor. Haley quoted 1 Peter 5:10 as something “which God used to speak to [her]” (#3, line 56), so she decided to make it her theme verse for the year. Members of the IWU community will often choose a “theme verse” that brings them comfort or gives them special purpose for a set time. She quoted the verse, “After you’ve suffered for a little while…the God of all grace will call himself to eternal glory in Jesus Christ and He will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (#3, line 56). She went on to explain

that what she read during her devotions were echoed during the special Summit chapel services in January:

“So it was kind of like God making it very clear so that I could not deny what He was telling me. He spoke to me about consecrating my life for Him and devoting all myself to Him and how that’s going to be a continual process and not just a one-time decision.” (Haley, #3, line 62)

Just as Haley identified God speaking directly to her through the Bible, Alex demonstrated his own processing of coming to terms with his past experience in inner-city Boston and the near-luxurious IWU campus by comparison. He said he was “thinking about what Jesus says in Matthew 25, which is, ‘When I was thirsty, did you give me a drink?’ and what is IWU doing – are we representing Christ in Marion?” (#2, line 182). Alex used the words of Jesus as a direct message for describing how Christ-followers should live. Earlier in that second interview, he asked the question, “What does Jesus teach?” (#2, line 48) in the context of expressing disappointment at the way Christians were responding to the refugee crisis in the autumn of 2015.

Communication from God did not always bring comfort; sometimes God

communicated a message that prompted the participants about an issue that would encourage them to change their behavior or thinking, much like Alex’s examples in the paragraph above. Maddie expressed her growth over the first semester in terms of learning how “faith isn’t just about information, it’s about formation…and being open to what God’s trying to convict me of or help me pay attention to…” (#2, line 76). In the same interview, she later asserted, “God’s been teaching me that true freedom comes through submission” (#2, line 246), which can be an unpleasant experience at times.

Finally, participants spoke frequently about their prayer life, often recounting bits and pieces of actual prayer “conversations” to me during their interviews. In these instances, they

passivated God as the listener in the communicative act. Helen, Johanna, and Kirk spoke freely and at great length about their conversations with God. Helen’s statement, “I pray to Him in the good times and I pray to Him in the bad times” (#2, line 42) summarizes the many references she made to communicating with God throughout her interviews. She further added, “I sort of just have to give up my worries to God and hope for the best” (#2, line 42), which illustrated her ongoing positivity over the year despite difficulties she experienced in making deep friendships (#4, line 18).

In some of these instances, participants referred to God in the vocative, recounting how they talked to God during their prayers. Johanna expressed a variety of emotions in her prayer retellings, ranging from confusion during a church service as a child (#1, line 124) to fear about where God might want her to go in life (#4, line 32). In each example, she

demonstrated vulnerability by sharing her personal communication to God with an outside person. Twenty-one percent of the God references related to Communication came from Kirk, the highest number out of all the participants. In one interview line alone, he used the vocative to address God four times, which helped illustrate his vibrant prayer life. In this one utterance, he wanted to know where God was in his life, asked God to reveal the next steps in His plan for Kirk, requested that God change his attitude, and finally acknowledged God’s presence despite not knowing the next step (#2, line 68).