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“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” - Matthew 11:15

I am slowly and inexorably going deaf. I finally admitted this a couple of years ago. I got tired of pretending to hear what people were saying; tired of people getting aggravated with me because I simply nodded and smiled when I failed to catch what they had said, and then didn’t show up when I was supposed to. My wife ended up being the deciding factor. “You’re hard of hearing.” She explained as though to a child. “You need hearing aids. It’s not the end of the world.” She’s wonderful; and she means well. She loves me and she’s trying to let me know that being deaf or half crippled doesn’t make me any less of a man. It’s her love speaking.

But it’s difficult to watch your little girl try to tell you something and only get a jumbled mess. It’s tough to love music and enjoy singing your whole life and then slowly, gradually lose the ability to hear yourself or to distinguish voices from background music. It’s as if my head has developed a slow leak and all the beautiful music, the sounds of birds, of wind moving through the grass, of my wife humming or my children laughing is draining out of my life.

Many of us are deaf – spiritually deaf. God speaks to us every day through His Spirit and all we catch is a jumbled mess. We tend to accept the good times as something God did, and the bad times as coming from the other guy. You know – the bad one. But just like both the sound of thunder and the sound of rain come together, both the light and the darkness of life come from God (Isaiah 45:7) It’s like we’re only catching certain pitches of God’s voice. We’re missing whole sections of very important sentences and we’re messing up because of it.

We are all spiritually deaf because of a congenital disease called sin. It’s not any one thing you’ve done – it’s something you were born with. I’ve lived a very “enthusiastic” life: rock climbing, parachuting, martial arts, bungee jumping, loud rock and roll…People sometimes think that my body is such a mess because of that lifestyle. But actually a mosquito did this to me. It doesn’t take a lot does it? One murder makes you a murderer. One sin makes you a sinner. And because you’re a sinner, you have a hard time hearing God’s voice and you’re ethically crippled.

But fortunately, there is a cure for you. If you will take one big dose of humility, chased by a shot of repentance and then get regular maintenance shots of Jesus – your spiritual hearing will clear right up. You will mount up with wings as eagles; run and not be weary; walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31). Do you hear what I’m saying?

"Refreshment in Refuge" from Gina Burgess

Talents and gifts

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