Stuttering and the Glory of God
I’m told it started when I was about three, but I don’t remember.
What I do remember are my friends standing by while I took minutes to get one sentence out. Certain words, or sounds, were harder to get out, but nothing was ever fluid. Honestly, for so long, it didn’t bother me. My stutter was just part of me. I did all the things stutterers are supposed to do growing up: speech therapy, learning to slow down and control my breathing, reading books aloud, and even having a speech mentor. It’s gotten better, but it never fully went away. It’s always there, lurking. I’ve also prayed for God to take it away, but instead, He called me into full-time pastoral ministry. I answered the call.
Today, I’m training to be an pastor and I’m a person who stutters. There are days when I still pray for my stutter to be taken away. There are days when I listen to somebody speak eloquently and find myself wishing that I could just speak like them- normally. But I’m learning to rejoice in my stutter. That may sound strange- why would I rejoice in my stutter? I rejoice in my stutter because it teaches me about my God.
God is sovereign over my speech. It’s no accident that I stutter. I think back to Moses. In Exodus 4, God tells Moses that he’s to go to Pharaoh and command that God’s people be given freedom. Moses pushes back on this. “I’m not eloquent! I don’t speak well! How do you expect me to go speak to the king?” Some theologians say that Moses had a stutter like me. Others say that Moses was just slow of speech, or maybe he just didn’t think that he, a lowly shepherd, could convince a king to free God’s people with mere words. No matter why Moses wasn’t confident in the way that he spoke, God challenged him with this:
“Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak” (Exodus 4:11-12, ESV).
In his own brokenness, Moses says, “I can’t go speak to the king!” God says, “I’m the king over your body! In fact, I’m the Creator. I’m sovereign over your tongue! I made you on purpose.” Does God promise Moses that he’ll have perfect eloquence in front of Pharaoh? No. Does God promise Moses that he’ll be quick-witted and impress everybody with his fancy speaking skills? No. Instead, God promises that He will be with him, and will teach him everything he needs to say. All Moses needs to do is go. When God called me into ministry, He didn’t take away my stutter. Instead, He called me to go and He’s used my stutter to teach me to rely on Him for every word I speak. Robert Falconer of South African Theological Seminary puts it like this: “Ministers of the gospel [do] not have to be brilliant, eloquent, or sophisticated; instead, they simply [need] to rely completely on the Spirit’s presence and power to bring the lost to saving faith.”
I rejoice that, in my stutter, I’ve learned to rely on God. I can’t do my job without Him. I can’t speak on a stage, lead volunteers, make phone calls, or pray over sick children in the hospital without my Father beside me, teaching me how to speak.
God has the power to take away my stutter before all of the saints are ultimately healed in glory. And someday, He just might. But it may not be taken away on this side of heaven. “I do believe that some people will be healed immediately – even today – for the glory of God and as an overflow of his compassion upon the needs of people,” writes Pastor Paul Carter. “God hasn’t changed. He still sees and he still cares. But I also believe that waiting is sanctifying and showing. It shows the world and all the watching angels that some people love God even when it hurts. I believe his power is made perfect in our weakness.”
I rejoice that, in my stutter, God’s power is put on display. We serve a God who is magnified in our weakness. Paul writes to the Church in Corinth, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9, ESV). If God’s power is shown to the people I love in the way that I speak, then I will learn to boast in that weakness.
Even as I continue to pray for my stutter to be taken from me, I’ll trust the heart of the Father. I’ll rejoice when His glory is made great in my speech impediment.
When reflecting on this very passage, John Calvin writes, “Our weakness may seem, as if it were an obstacle in the way of God’s perfecting his strength in us. Paul does not merely deny this, but maintains, on the other hand, that it is only when our weakness becomes apparent, that God’s strength is duly perfected.” When the little boy who stutters grows up to be a pastor, that points back to a working and moving God. When the teenager who can’t get a word out reading aloud in class grows up to teach from the Bible on a stage in a full sanctuary, that magnifies how powerful our Savior is. When the man who can’t order the coffee he wants without a stammer prays for healing over children, that is God’s power made manifest.
Pastor and theologian John Piper says, “God’s design is to make you a showcase for Jesus’s power. But not necessarily the way the market demands: not by getting rid of all our weaknesses; but by giving strength to endure and even rejoice in tribulation. Let God be God here. If he wills to show the perfection of his Son’s power in our weakness instead of by our escape from weakness, then he knows best.”
We serve a good Father, and He knows exactly what is best for us. His plan is perfect, and His power is without end. God’s ultimate plan is for His glory and His namesake to be made great. And this is good news for us! It’s by God’s glory being made manifest through the life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we’ve come to life through Him. It’s by God’s glory being made great that we’ve been drawn to faith, and it’s by God’s glory being made great that we see others drawn to Him as well.
If my stuttering brings glory to the Father, praise God! I trust His heart and His hand. If my stuttering is taken away on this earth and that brings glory to the Father, praise God! I trust His heart and His hand.
I conclude with rejoicing in this sweet thought: Someday, in glory, God will surely take away my stuttering. “Remember that our situation is temporary compared to eternity,” writes author Chelsea Patterson Sobolik. “If this present world were the end of the story and we had no Savior in which to place our hope, we should be pitied. But praise God, that is not our situation!” Instead, we’re promised that Christ has overcome. “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away,” (Revelation 21:3, ESV).
In Jesus, my stuttering will be healed before the throne of grace. Until then, I’m going to hold onto that ultimate hope while trusting the heart and hand of the Father who created me and who loves me. I’m going to rejoice in my stuttering, and I’m going to pray that, in my weakness, Jesus is made strong.