"Spiritual Deafness"

"And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue." Mark 7:33 

When we are born, we are all born deaf-- spiritually deaf because of sin. The only "ears/hearing" that we have is our natural ability to hear natural sounds and "fleshly ears" that hear the sounds of the flesh. We can't hear spiritual sounds-- we have to have "spiritual ears" in order to hear them. "He that hath an ear, let him hear."

Having the ability to hear spiritually doesn't come automatically. It doesn't just happen. We don't work hard enough in order to learn how to hear spiritual sounds. Natural birth gives us our natural hearing, spiritual birth gives us our spiritual hearing. At the "new birth" the Lord places His "fingers in our ears" so that we can now hear what His Spirit is saying to us. He removes spiritual deafness.

Once we have received our "spiritual ears/hearing", it is then up to us to maintain our hearing. We must guard against getting "spiritual wax build up", or anything else that would cause us to become spiritually hard of hearing. We do this by continually listening to God's word- through reading it, through hearing it preached, through meditating on it. We keep our spiritual hearing healthy by obedience. When we ignore the prompting of the Holy Spirit, when we quench Him, when we disobey, when we go our way instead of following His direction, we are allowing our hearing to become dull. Each time we do it gets a little harder for us to hear Him the next time He speaks to us-- that still, small voice becomes almost indiscernible. Our spiritual hearing is also kept keen through praise and worship. Praise and worship refocuses you. It causes all your "spiritual senses" to be attentive in one direction-- on the Lord. Lastly, we keep our hearing healthy by not listening to evil and negative speaking that is against the Word of God. Our hearing has to be guarded from error so that it is able to hear truth.

Are you doing what it takes to keep your spiritual hearing healthy? Have you become hard of hearing? Is your hearing keen or almost deaf?

Have a great day. God gives us spiritual hearing at the new birth, but we have to maintain it everyday and keep it healthy.

For further reading:

Matthew 11:15; 13:9,43
Revelation 2:7,11,17, 29
1 Corinthians 2:14