As your desire for information increased this week, most likely too did the number of words you consumed. Perhaps two, three, or even four times the amount of words that you normally would hear. Words upon words, compounded by more words.

For many of us, the words we heard made us scramble for safety, stockpile basic goods in the name of scarcity. Smart. Common sense. Important.

But for all the words spoken, did you find comfort? Or complete peace? Did you hear from heaven? Were the ways of God made clear to you? Have you made sense of it all?

You see, there is a shortage, felt much more than the current scarcity of basic goods. A rare thing that cannot be easily found even in times of plenty or peace. And when in times past this has been found on the earth, it has conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the raging of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, gained strength in weakness, became mighty in battle and put foreign armies to flight. What is it? It is men and women who speak more than words. They carry a voice. A voice which is known more before God, then before men. A voice that speaks with so great authority, we do not question their credentials.

It needs not to raise its volume in tenor, nor ramble on in length to cut to our very core with even a handful of words. This voice cannot be purchased nor bartered for. It will not be found on a store shelf and no degree or diploma can award it as a well earned and deserved gift. No, this voice is born only in anguish.

Anguish.

"When Jesus saw her crying and the Jews who had come with her crying. He was deeply moved groaned in the spirit and greatly troubled." John 11:33. Anguish. Groaning.

And just two verses later. Jesus wept.

Anguish. Groaning. Weeping.

John Knox, the great Scottish reformer is known for a single prayer, which led him through untold dangers and threats on his life. "Give me Scotland or I die!" After his exile from Scotland and upon his return, it was said, "John Knox could put more life into his hearers than 600 trumpets." That's from the homiletic review volume 67 written in 1914.

A voice worth 600 trumpets. So powerful was this voice that even his rival Mary queen of Scots is said to have declared. "I feared the prayer of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe."

Our words so often clamoring, noisy, ineffective. Yet here was one whose voice shook a nation and made a queen tremble.

First Corinthians 2:4, "My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom. But with a demonstration of the Spirit's power." We know these verses and perhaps we've even heard these stories. But do we yet scramble in haste to obtain a voice like this? Are we driven in desperation to get alone with God?

We want the authority of this voice. But are we content to be strangers before men?

A voice like this comes with anguish, groaning, burden, sometimes isolation, and always much weeping.

Acts 20:31, "Remembering that night and day for three years, I never stopped warning each one of you with tears."

David Wilkerson poses the question this way, "Whatever happened to anguish in the house of God? Where are the Sunday school teachers that weep over kids they know are not hearing and are going to hell?"

We have many words, but few voices like this. We have crowds who will scramble for safety and stockpile in scarcity, but few who will get alone with God and weep in anguish over a lost and dying world.

Jesus rebuked the experts in the law this way, "You have taken away the key to knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves."