QUOTE : Speech-act theory makes a convincing case that our words not only convey information, they get things done. However, God’s words have a power infinitely beyond our own. Timothy Ward’s book Words of Life argues that God’s words are identical with his actions.104 He quotes Genesis 1:3, “‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Ward observes that the passage does not say that first God spoke and then he proceeded to do what he said he would do. No, his word itself brought the light about. When God names someone, his very word also constitutes the person. When he renames Abram to be Abraham—“father of a multitude”—that word makes the aged man and his wife biologically and spiritually capable of being the progenitors of a whole race (Gen 17:5). Psalm 29 is an entire hymn of praise of the power of God’s voice. “The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars—the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. The voice of the Lord shakes the desert—the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh” (Ps 29:5, 8). We see again that what God’s voice does, God does.