There are three words that a preacher, or anyone who is sharing the message of Jesus Christ, should never use. First of all words are very powerful things. We know this because Jesus Christ is the Word. The Apostle John states this unequivocally right off the bat in his gospel. John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This is a phenomenal statement. Largely because the first words of the Bible make it clear that God spoke and all creation came into existence. It came into existence by God speaking the Word. The word is Jesus. Words are a fertile force of creation and communication.
That is why when people are speaking with one another the words used should be chosen with some foresight and not haphazardly. Use the wrong words and one’s communication can be harmful. Or in the very least confounding. The point of communication is to project ideas. If one merely babbles there is not much likelihood of understanding.
So, what are the three words that should absolutely not be used when sharing the good news of Jesus Christ? Let me state it like this: I will speak three sentences and you tell me the words to which I refer. Listen to them with a feeling projecting excitement.
“In Luke 7:14-15 Jesus comes across a funeral procession, a mother is going to bury her only son and Jesus stops and raises the young man from the dead. Isn’t that just incredible?”
“In John chapter 3 Jesus is taking with Nicodemus and tells him that ‘you must be born again.’ What a fantastic concept for this Jewish ruler to comprehend.”
“In Mark 4:37 Jesus is with His disciples in a boat crossing a lake and a storm developed and threatens to capsize them and Jesus speaks and the wind and the waves cease. Wow, isn’t that just unbelievable!”
I hear these kinds of statements with alarming frequency. A preacher I sat under for some years, who frankly, I feel was a gifted expositor of the Scriptures, but never-the-less, often used the word “unbelievable” which seemed to me to be completely contradictory to the message he was attempting to convey. If you want someone to be convinced of the message you are promoting you don’t then say it is unbelievable, do you? Neither do you tell the listener, “hey, these thing I’m telling you are incredible”, and expect to encourage belief?
The thing is, all three of these words have a seriously negative connotation.
Incredible means “not credible” or inconceivable, preposterous, ridiculous.
Unbelievable means “not to be believed, implausible, impossible, improbable, inconceivable.”
The word at the root of Fantastic is “fantasy”, i.e. strange, imaginary!
They all have at their root a concept based in the irrational and the made-up.
Sure, the colloquial usage of language in our so-called “modern era” can dictate that all three of these words, incredible, unbelievable, and fantastic, are often use as a sense of wonder or amazement. One hears TV news readers and commentators use them an awful lot! But my contention is that when the message of salvation is being discussed and you are attempting to impart some life-altering truth, any hint that the things you are saying are really some far-fetched, bizarre concept will impede and sabotage your goal.
I’m just saying there are already tremendous hindrances in the comprehension of the wonderful and awesome message of God’s plan of salvation which required Jesus to obey His Father in heaven to willingly submit to the cross and be tortured and killed as a sacrificial Lamb in order to pay the penalty for the sins of mankind, that this amazing, astonishing, astounding, awe-inspiring, breathtaking, inspiring, magnificent, majestic, miraculous, spectacular, staggering, stunning, wonderful, and wondrous message should not be subverted by using misleading words. I’m not saying that God can’t overcome any such obstacle. It just seems to me that if you are in a position to preach the Word of God and desire people to believe in Jesus Christ to be saved, and to believe that the Scriptures are the real and true Word of God as they indeed claim, you don’t want to contaminate your messages with words like “unbelievable”. Food for thought.
[Scriptures taken from the New American Standard Bible © 1995]