One-Liners

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter;
    to search out a matter is the glory of kings.

Proverbs 25:2

One of the ways that God speaks to us is through what I’ll call “one-liners.” Jesus often did this when He quoted the Old Testament. He quoted most from the Psalms, Deuteronomy, Isaiah and Exodus and, when He did, He often quoted only one line from a larger passage. Jesus’s intention was to allude to the whole passage, but He knew His listeners would only need one or two lines to get the meaning.

For instance, if I was talking to you and I said, “I pledge allegiance to the flag…” you would likely know the rest. Or if I said, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come…” you would likely know the rest. This is how most of the Old Testament was for the Jewish people. They grew up on it.

Jesus still speaks to us today in this same way. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus will often drop a one-liner into our hearts and minds. Sometimes it is a part of a scripture passage. Sometimes it is a line of a worship song that makes reference to a scripture passage. Often, its meaning is not immediately understood. As the Proverb above admits, God isn’t hiding things from us but for us. He’s giving us a clue that He wants us to explore.

If someone hands you a key to a lock, do you assume that the key is the gift or that the key was meant to open up something that leads to the gift. The key is only the first part of the gift, but it was meant to lead you into more. This is how the one-liners from the Lord work, so don’t ignore them. Instead, explore them. According to the above Proverb, to search out a matter is the glory of royalty, and we are royalty in the Kingdom of God.

One of God’s favorite times to give us one-liners is just as we are waking up in the morning. Don’t miss these! Our spirits do not sleep and neither does God. He often ministers to us throughout the night as our bodies and minds are at rest. And just as we are waking up, He will often leave us with a one-liner either as a message or as an encouraging word.

I woke up this morning and the first thing that ran through my mind was “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Now, I knew that this line was in scripture somewhere, but I had not read that passage recently. It wasn’t in a song that I had been listening to. In other words, it felt like it came out of left field. I knew it was the Lord.

So my next task, if I wanted to be a good steward of His words to me, was to search out its meaning. I knew this was something people shouted to Jesus on Palm Sunday as He entered Jerusalem but that was about it. As I explored it more, I learned that it actually comes from Psalm 118. So I read the whole Psalm and, in doing so, I realized that God had more for me than just that one line. The whole Psalm was a mixture of declarations about Jesus and personal encouragement to me. It was beautiful!

But if I hadn’t paid attention to the one-liner from God, if I didn’t know that was a way the Lord loves to speak to His children, I could have ignored it and missed it. We need to be ready in quiet moments–in the shower, in the car, as we are going asleep, and especially as we are waking up–to receive one-liners from the Lord. And we need to be ready to explore the fullness of all that the one-liner was meant to say. If you are willing to pay attention, you’ll notice that God is speaking to you more than you may realize.