Before David faced Goliath, Saul offered him armor.
In the biblical account, David tried on the armor. He walked around for a moment. But it didn’t fit. It wasn’t just the size of the thing; it was the whole attire. David would have been fighting like someone else. It didn’t fit. So he took it off.
But let’s imagine for a moment a scenario where David doesn’t take off that armor. In this telling, David puts on the armor and gets a few likes, comments, and subscribes from Saul’s men. “Now you look like a king,” they say. And David, struggling for identity, decides to keep it up for a while.
As the armor of the king, it was impressive. Wearing it would signal something. David looks the part. When someone saw him out on the battlefield, they’re able to say, “Oh, that’s one of Saul’s guys.” He’s one of them. They see themselves through him. And because we’re a people who are radically dedicated to our own awesomeness, the Israelites back at camp are certain to cheer on glistening David. (He’s certainly more accepted than a silly kid unarmored with only a sling and a few stones).
But we know how this story ends. David fighting with someone else’s armor and the weapons of another, doesn’t fell the giant named Goliath. He looks more impressive than ever, and yet somehow, he’s never been smaller.
That’s the risk of wearing someone else’s armor. Do it long enough and you forget how to walk without it. In the same way, if you borrow someone else’s voice long enough, eventually yours goes quiet. Contort yourself to fit an algorithm long enough, and you’re only slaying imaginary giants. You’re just surviving appearances.
I think that was Twitter (now X) for many of us. It was a platform that made us feel bigger. The exercise of a voice that we didn’t even know we had. A megaphone from a platform where we could @ any “Goliath” we chose, and maybe get a little attention for ourselves.
Twitter gave us a voice.
Until it didn’t.
Did 'X' ever give us a voice? Or was it just a microphone?
A few years ago, on Twitter, I made a silly joke about former wrestler Hacksaw Jim Duggan. He liked my tweet. It made my decade. That’s how Twitter was in the early days. For the first time in history, everyday people had a public voice. You didn’t need a newsroom, a publisher, or an expensive microphone. You just needed an account.
It felt like a digital-commons. You could @ someone…anyone…and potentially get a response. And if you were engaging enough, you could lead conversations with people around the globe. For many of us it felt like finally having a bit of a voice.
But it came with a cost.
You had to wear the armor of another. A little shepherd boy throwing stones wasn’t going to get promoted. You had to wear Saul’s armor if you wanted exposure. It gave you a voice, but you had to give up on things like human decency and thinking the best of others. The algorithm didn’t reward the fruit of the Spirit.
That’s not entirely true, though. You could still carve out a little slice of a platform by being reasonable and engaging with kindness. It was harder to do, but still possible. But even that went away when Elon Musk purchased Twitter and turned it into X.
Since Musk’s acquisition, there has been a steady decline in monthly users. Many believers have left the platform. Our voice was essentially taken away. Engagement plummeted for many users. It’s like we still had a microphone, but the sound guy had hit mute on the house speakers.
And that’s when I realized that X never actually gave us a voice. It gave a microphone. And a microphone isn’t a voice.
With Twitter/X we could speak into the void and occasionally hear an echo back—but that doesn’t mean we were truly heard. And it certainly doesn’t mean we were being formed in healthy ways by the experience. If anything, we were being slowly discipled by the algorithm. We were trained to say what gets a reaction, to measure worth in metrics, and to confuse being visible with being faithful. In other words, we were trained to wear Saul’s armor.
There’s a difference between speaking and being heard. And there is a difference between having something to say and saying something to be heard. X blurs that line. We learned quickly on this platform that you had to be fast, clever, and loud. Say it with a bite. Put a little spice in there and you’ll get engagement. It’s telling, isn’t it, that one of the best ways to “grow your platform” is to just keep posting. That’s volume over depth.
X didn’t give you a voice. It gave you a microphone. Then it hit mute. But this is good news, because that also means it cannot ultimately take away your voice. If you’ve got it, nobody can take it away.
How Do You Find Your Voice?
Contrast this all with the way of Jesus. He never scrambled to stay visible. He often withdrew to quiet places. He had a voice. He knew who He was. And He was going to speak truth whether people were listening or not. His words weren’t determined by an algorithm; they were determined by the Father.
It’s not about finding the right platform.
I’d like to think that many Christians are walking away because they didn’t like what was going on in their own heart. I’d love to think that this exodus is occurring because people have found freedom in Christ and identity rooted in His work and not in social media. But I have a suspicion that many have left for the same reason I did—it just stopped being fun. And your posts were increasingly met with little to no engagement.
What I’ve witnessed is that with the exodus from X, people are trying to find another platform. But I think we’re missing something fundamental. What happens if we leave X but still chase the same false idea of finding our voice through social media? What if that’s not how someone actually finds their voice?
There are so many false ways of trying to “find your voice”. “Voice” can be synonymous with “how I get heard”. But that’s not what it means to have a voice. A voice isn’t your platform. It’s not about manufacturing who you are. It’s about getting your voice from the Father.
Let’s think about The Little Mermaid again. She lost her voice. And there was nothing she could do to get it back. It wasn’t until her father intervened—until love sacrificed itself on her behalf—that her voice was restored. And that’s the same for us. Our voice ultimately comes from another. It’s about another.
Your voice isn’t something you manufacture. It’s something you are given. But how do you discover it? How do you use it properly once you do discover it?
5 Questions to Help You Find Your Voice
We talk a lot these days about “finding your voice” as if it’s something buried under a pile of self-doubt or just waiting to be unlocked by the right platform. But biblically speaking, voice doesn’t come from self-expression. Voice flows out of identity, and your God-given identity is always received, never constructed.
Think again about David. And Saul. Saul was always posturing, trying to find his identity. His voice was determined by the prevailing winds of the day. To use modern terms, we might say that he gave his life trying to game the algorithm. But that’s not true of David. David didn’t need to prove himself through performance. His identity came through his relationship with God.
First and foremost, then, our voice is something that we receive. You can’t start with audience. You have to start with your own passion, your own relationship with God. Everything else has to flow out of this. But even still it can be difficult to discover your own voice. Here are 5 questions that might help you.
1. What burdens you?
Your voice is often found in the place where your heart breaks. What are the things that you just can’t shut up about? What conversations do you keep coming back to? Your voice will always resonate where you feel most compelled to speak. It doesn’t matter if there is a market for it. If it’s your voice, use it.
2. What do people consistently ask you about?
Sometimes others can recognize your voice more clearly than you can. Are there questions people ask you when they need encouragement or clarity? What do they trust you to speak into?
3. What would you say if no one were watching?
Strip away the audience, the reactions, and the metrics of the platform. What would you still want to say?
4. What resonates with you when you read?
We do tend to learn our own voice from those we are around. It’s like a child learning to talk by imitating their parents. The books you read, and those that stir you up, might be a place to discover your own voice.
5. What do you want others to know about God, even if it costs you something to say it?
If your life ended without ever getting to say X, would you be disappointed? What is X?
The best way to find your voice is to keep listening. Keep reading. Keep praying. Keep diving into the Word. And keep “talking”. That doesn’t mean that you hit publish on all your thoughts. But the more you write, the more you’ll discover what is authentically you. But you won’t find that very well on a social media platform like X.
Photo Credit; ©Getty Images/Dan Kitwood / Staff
Mike Leake is husband to Nikki and father to Isaiah and Hannah. He is also the lead pastor at Calvary of Neosho, MO. Mike is the author of Torn to Heal and Jesus Is All You Need. His writing home is http://mikeleake.net and you can connect with him on Twitter @mikeleake. Mike has a new writing project at Proverbs4Today.
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