We could start with Webster’s or Oxford’s English dictionary and pull together a whole bunch of background on the term sibilance, and there would be no little value in that. Still, In the context of this foray into blogging, the sibilant sword is a matter of particular reference. The sibilance is the whispering, hissing, slash of a particular sword through all the work that I produce, a sword I do not own, but by the grace of God am welcome to approach with humility to be trained in. That is the Sword of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God.

Sibilant Sword is also alliterative which is a deliciously decisive way to describe the details we wish to discuss. Those are the details of how this sibilance of the Sword of the Spirit cuts through all the works you will encounter in this blog. We will speak of sonnets, of swordmaking, of surfing, of service, of science, of sadness, of suicide. We will ponder together sanity and insanity – struggle, satisfaction, and ultimately of sanctification.

This is a blog geared toward men, toward the struggles we face in a strange world filled with immense noise sidled against a serious silence about things that have real substance. The criticality of our modern moment cannot be overstated. We were made for a time such as this, by a God whose plans are supreme to serve Him well – not just pastors and elders, but all of us men. To do that we need some help, and some guidance from the Word. We also need each other, fellow brothers in arms standing side by side in the soldiery of Christ. Yet all that pretty pretentious language hardly helps us figure out how to act rightly even if we understand it conceptually.

So, while the topics will be broad and varied, there will ever be a return to the practical, the actionable, the applicable – the slicing of the Sword of God’s word into the fibers of our being and out into the world that we were created to help shape, grow, defend, and build to the glory of God.

To the end of assuring that every post contains an application, we must first hear the sibilance of the sword before we can hope to wield it, to see it slice through the fog of our modern world. Sarcasm dictates that telling you to read the Bible is so very passe, so blase, so basic. Sincerity dictates that the only way to become proficient in the sword is in its usage, so, I end this first post on a challenge – set sword practice time every single solitary sunup. Set God’s Word before you as the first thing in the morning, pick up the Sword and start practicing every morning. Read it, pray over it, apply it to your life.

Reading you know how to do, though we will have a post later on contextualizing the word, so that your sword practice can be more fruitful, but for now it will be enough to pick it up and read.

Pray over it, and pray it. The psalms are specially suited to this purpose, as many of them are prayers themselves. Start with mimicry as the beginning of all practice. Watch and repeat. It is the same in prayer and practice with the Word of God. Start with imitation.

Finally, apply it to your life. For many of us, this is the most trying difficulty, as if the Word were some ancient tool unsuited to the sultry siren songs of our time, archaic and dead. Here I return to sibilance, to the whisper of the strike of the sword. Sibilance caries as the trailing hiss of the passing of the blade, but if you have ever swung a physical sword, or even a toy sword perhaps as a boy playing knights, it makes no sound at all if not swung with force. There will be a longer post on this as well, but, for now, put some effort into the application in faith and the Lord will certainly bless the swinging of His Sword for your Sanctification.