From my journal:

Monday, June 13, 2005.

This is the big day.  “Terrified” pretty well says it all.  We began it with a prayer and that prayer continued on silently through the day for both of us. 

Today I will undergo a surgery that has never been done successfully before, using a newly invented device that has never been used before.  If it works, my vision will be saved for awhile longer.  If it doesn’t, I will be blind in that eye.  If we don’t try it, I will be blind in both eyes, probably before the year is out.

We arrived early, expecting a wait, but they took me straight in, after I signed some special consent forms upstairs.  Since the FDA had not approved this, “you will have to sign your life away,” the doctor told me, but what choice did I have?  I signed page after page, and then initialed some handwritten lines added along the side of the form.  One of them said, “I understand that no one knows how this material will interact with human tissue.”  Finally they sent me back downstairs to the surgical floor. 

When the nurse called me in, Keith and I shared a long hug.  I am sure that no one else there understood why we made such a big deal out of this, but it was possible that I would never see him out of that eye again, and maybe not the other before much longer.

That was quite a day and quite an experience.  I was indeed terrified.  You don’t sign your life away like that unless you are desperate, unless the only other choice is a bad one.  I did it, and it gave my left eye another year and a half of vision before we had more difficult and painful surgeries to go through, which have spared me yet again.  Signing my life away has given me many more years of vision so far—vision, not good vision—years no one expected even if the surgery worked, and who knows how much more to come before the medications stop working and the surgeries are compromised. 

That level of desperation is the level you must feel in your spiritual life before you will “sign your life away” to God. 

And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison-house were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened: and every one's bands were loosed. And the jailor, being roused out of sleep and seeing the prison doors open, drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do yourself no harm: for we are all here. And he called for lights and sprang in, and, trembling for fear, fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?  Acts 16:26-31.

Do you think that jailor wasn’t terrified?  Do you think he wasn’t desperate?  Imagine how that plea sounded coming from this trembling man who thought his life was over.  “What must I do to be saved?”

Desperate people do desperate things—like commit their lives to God.  If you never felt that desperation, chances are your commitment was not real.  Chances are you will fall when times get tough, when sacrifices are demanded, when you lose more than you bargained for.  Desperate people do not bargain.  They take the first offer and take it immediately.

How desperate were you when you were offered salvation?  If you “grew up in the church,” you may never have felt it.  Doing what everyone expects of you is not desperation.  Wanting the approval of others, especially one particular “other” is not desperation.  “Just in case” is not desperation.  You have to recognize a need and know there is no other way of taking care of that need.  You have to know what it means to stand a sinner before a holy God—and it doesn’t mean you feel guilty because you stole a cookie from the cookie jar. But Simon Peter, when he saw it, fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord, Luke 5:8.  That, standing a sinner before a holy God, is the recognition you must come to.

Signing your entire life away to God is exactly what He expects of you.  So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple, Luke 14:33. Nothing and no one can be more important to you than Him.   I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, Gal 2:20.  Your entire life is no longer yours to do with as you please, but since you know that is your only hope, you do it gladly.

How desperate were you?  How desperate are you now?

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory, Col 3:1-3.

Dene Ward

I’m seeing a lot my brothers and sisters running around beating their breasts and wailing like the Little Red Hen, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” The world is about to end, they are sure.  All is lost for the people of God.  Nonsense.

And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. And now be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here: for God did send me before you to preserve life, (Gen 45:4-5.

Would you have thought twenty years before that statement that God was doing anything?  Here is the one He has sent to preserve the chosen people of God, the forbears of the Messiah, and he is sold as a slave and then falsely accused and thrown into prison and forgotten by the man he helped.  And now those chosen people are in danger of death from a famine.  But yes, God was accomplishing exactly what He set out to do, using the imperfect and illogical actions of men.

Years later the people of God are under constant attack from marauding Midianites who regularly swoop in and take the produce of their farming and herding, leaving them barely able to survive and afraid to perform even menial day to day tasks.

Now the angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, “The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor,” Judges 6:11-12.

O mighty man of valor?  A man so scared he is trying to thresh wheat deep in a hole?  A man whose first task he would only try in the middle of the night?  A man who needed sign after sign to reassure him?  And then he has only an army of 300 against a host of 135,000 (Judges 8:10)?  Yes, that was the man and the method God chose and that man ultimately came through, delivering the people and acting as judge for forty years after.

They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against your treasured ones. They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!” For they conspire with one accord; against you they make a covenant— Ps 83:3-5.  Imagine how it looked to the few faithful throughout Israel’s history—the 7000 who did not bow their knee to Baal, the righteous remnant that watched as the city of God fell to invaders who performed sacrilege after sacrilege to prove that their god was more powerful than Jehovah.  And that is exactly how it looked.

And then think of those disciples as Jesus was carried away, tortured, and killed.  Here was the Messiah, they believed, and how could this be happening?  They had placed all their hopes in him and now that hope was lost.

But that too turned into the most unlikely victory—11 men standing on a mountain wondering how in the world they could fulfill the mission they had just been given.  Once again God managed, not to just eke out a victory, but to overwhelmingly conquer as Christianity swept the world. 

Did they give up when persecution hit them almost immediately?  Did they give up thirty years later when Nero tried it again? Or the next time, or the next?

Just who do we think God is?  He is not a loser.  He is in control.  His ways are not ours—surely you’ve quoted that verse yourself.  It may look like things are going south, but what has happened throughout history, over and over and over?  GOD WINS.  The victory is not always easy for His people.  Sometimes they are hurt.  Sometimes they die.  Sometimes they die horrible deaths.  When you committed your life to Him, what did you think you signed up for?  Comfort and ease?  Riches and popularity? 

Stop wailing and whining because things are bad.  The first century church came into a world every bit as bad—or worse!  It was a hard victory, but it was a victory.  Some of them celebrated it in another plane, and that may yet be our future too.  But do not ever doubt Who is in control and Who will win. 

Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and your dominion endures throughout all generations…Psalm 145:13.

Dene Ward

 On June 22, 1953, a newsboy in Brooklyn named Jimmy Bozart, dropped a nickel from the money he had made selling newspapers.  It broke in two which exposed the fact that the nickel was hollow.  Inside sat a tiny piece of microfilm.  I am assuming he contacted an authority of some sort because it eventually wound up in the hands of the FBI.  On the microfilm they found a coded numeric message containing 207 sets of five digit numbers. ”Mental Floss” tells me the case foundered after that.  Evidently there was no way to know who had paid for his paper with the hollow nickel, though everyone assumed it was a mistake. 

 Finally in May 1957, a Soviet KGB agent named Reino Hayhanen defected and provided the cipher key.  He also identified his “handler” (case manager/recruiter), Colonel Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, known by the alias “Mark”. He was arrested on June 21, 1957, and served four years of a 45 year sentence before being traded back to the Soviets in exchange for Francis Gary Powers, an American U2 pilot in1962.

 There was a time when spies were all the rage.  John LeCarre made a mint writing books about espionage.  Sean Connery and his subsequent brethren made the English spy James Bond come to life in film.  Even television went the route of shows about spies.  In the sixties and seventies we had Mission: Impossible, The Avengers, I Spy, The Man from UNCLE, and Secret Agent, the latter introduced with a song by the same name sung by Johnny Rivers.  We even had a comedic spoof of the genre in Get Smart and a Western version in the Wild, Wild West.

 Even the Bible has a few spies in it, though they had a decidedly different mission.  God’s spies were all about going to look and find out.  In Numbers 13 Moses sent 12 spies, one from each tribe, “to spy out the land.”  For forty days they traveled up and down the Promised Land and brought back the report of a beautiful and fruitful land.  But, they also brought back the report of a people who were large and strong and cities well fortified, and they lacked the faith to encourage the people to take it.

 Then, forty years later, we have the two spies who went into the city of Jericho.  Joshua charged them to “go view the land, especially Jericho” (Josh 2:1).  In both of these cases, God wanted the people to see the wealth and beauty of the land He had promised them, to become excited about taking that land and living there.  That was the result in only the second case.

 We have a Promised Land” in our future too, a city “whose builder and maker is God” (Heb 11:10).  God won’t be sending us there to “spy out the land” but He has certainly given us glimpses of that place in a life full of blessings sent because of His grace and mercy.

 We experience a little piece of Heaven when our marriages match His plan—when the two halves of His image become one.

 We see a piece of Heaven in a family that lives according to His plan, a home full of laughter and love.

  We have a view of Heaven in a garden that occasionally produces far more than the hundredfold one might expect, and feeds us with healthy and nourishing food.  We see it in a riot of color as the flowers bloom so much that they bend and nearly break the boughs they cover.  In those things we see the Garden we left and the one to which we hope to return.

  We get a little peek into Heaven in a church full of brothers and sisters who get along with one another, “each counting the other as better than himself.” 

 We hear a bit of Heaven when our brothers and sisters sing praises to God, not with a man-made instrument, but with the one God made, the one He most wants to hear, our voices blending in a harmony that matches the sincerity of our hearts and the harmony of our thoughts and goals.

 All these things and more give us just a small taste of what Heaven will be like, but only if they match God’s perfect design for them all.  Keep your eyes open to “spy out the land” God has in store for us, and encourage yourself to get there, not by your own might, but with the help and grace of the God who keeps it in store for us.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever Psalm 23:6

Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

When the boys were almost teens or just beginning those years, I noticed that Nathan had posters on the ceiling of his room. I just presumed he ran out of wall space. After he left, we took them down and discovered all the water marks and holes they had covered. At a still earlier age, the roof leaked in that end of the house and I tried everything I could to fix it as I could not afford a professional. Then, I did not know how to fix the holes, but Nathan managed—he covered them up. Finances improved and it was not long after we discovered the problem that we had someone fix it.

Watergate may be the best known in our times, but corruption and coverups have been around since government was. God ordained government, but Satan corrupted it. Coverups were much simpler when kings could simply lop off the heads of any who objected. Now, in our republican form of government, often the coverup causes more trouble than the original corruption.

Imputation is certainly the most evil coverup of all time with the vilest consequences. The notion that when God looks at a sinner under grace, He does not see the sins but rather looks at the perfect life of Christ which he accounts to the sinner. God wrote no passage of scripture that even suggests such an odious coverup –that a sinner with all his rotten, vulgar evil is counted righteous just like he is?!  God wrote no passage that even suggests such a thing. Satan must have worked overtime to get that one accepted as a prevalent doctrine among those denominations that call themselves, "Christian." It certainly leaves the sinner comfortable in his sins while continuing them without change and believing the lie that God is looking at Jesus rather than his foul soul.

Passages can be multiplied that proclaim that we are cleansed, pure and holy because we are forgiven by Jesus' blood, i.e. His death, burial and resurrection (Rom 6:1-7; Heb 8:11-12; Acts 22:16; etc ) Paul makes clear that God chose us to be holy and without blemish and by his grace through Jesus and the redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses i.e. sins (Eph 1:3-10). Forgiveness makes men holy, not some kind of mockery of holiness wherein God pretends that the sinner still in his sins has the righteousness of Jesus. We remain holy by finding the way of escape God provides and by seeking Jesus our advocate "IF" we sin (1 Cor 10:13; 1 Jn 2:1-2). Since God makes the way of escape, it takes a willful act by a man to return to bondage. A man overcomes temptation by God's gracious help.

"For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life"is expanded and explained when the apostle says a few verses later, "We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life…for he that has died is justified from sin." The whole matter of being saved by Jesus life is summed up, "I have been crucified with Christ and it is no more I who lives but Christ lives in me" (Rom 5:10; 6:4,7; Gal 2:20). You have no need to cover up the holes in your holiness, the ugly stains on your soul with pretend posters of Jesus taped up between you and God. Repent and live righteously by the power of the blood.

As Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself a glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

And such were some of you: but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

From almost the moment I knew I would survive, I resented that I was "the officer who got shot." I knew officers who treated their caseloads like they were not people at all. At the coffee urn, they referred to their probationers as "dirtbags," "lowlife's" or worse terms not suitable for printing. And, if anything, they spoke to them worse, harsh words and manner like decent people would not use on their dogs. And I was the one who was shot?!  As I watched such, perhaps even the majority of officers ruined any chance that people who had made a mistake had of building a life by their disdain. I felt like shooting some of them myself. Now, make no mistake, I was hard when necessary, firm at all times, demanding. But, the people who were making it, or even on the way, said I was the best probation officer they ever had. The ones that violated, made no effort, would not listen, had a different opinion. I often told them, "The only difference between me and you is that my sins are not crimes."

In my officer safety classes, the rule I pushed hardest was to treat the probationers like human beings. As a general rule, that will make one safer when he goes out among them; but the second part of my rule stated that doing otherwise changes who you are. Often, police officers develop an "us vs them" mentality. We live in the real world, these lowlifes are the problem and if you don't see it that way, you need to wake up, became their attitude.

Jesus ate with sinners; Paul said, "such were some of you" after a list of "lowlife" sins. Would you guess how many "such" would have been converted by the attitude once expressed to me in a business meeting of the church where I was preaching, "You are bringing the wrong type people to church?" Not said in many places, but palpable in every other way, the same attitude keeps many away from their salvation.

In a total reversal, many say, be accepting, one must show tolerance for other opinions and lifestyles. Thus, the gospel and the holiness of God lose all meaning. Jesus died to save us from our sins, not to save us in them. He arose to give the power to transform ourselves to be sons of God. How can a sinner renew his mind unless he is confronted?

With many, the confrontation is with so much grace that the sinner has no idea he has been reproved (corrected). He walks away thinking, "that was a nice conversation" (or sermon). Where is the salt? "You are the salt of the earth." A friend once read every occurrence of the word, "salt" in the Bible. Tedious! But he learned that not once is the word used in the sense of preservative. NOT ONCE. "Speak with grace seasoned with salt."  Without making a sinner feel like a lowlife, we recovering sinners can speak clearly enough to cause him to repent. Otherwise, we are false teachers, comforting the one mired in evil.

I charge you in the sight of God, and of Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be urgent in season, out of season; REPROVE, REBUKE, EXHORT, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine; but, having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own desires;  and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn aside unto fables. But be  sober in all things, suffer hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry (2 Tim 4:1-5).

Keith Ward

“Are you looking for a sign?  This is it!”

            We saw that on a highway somewhere when we were traveling, and under it the address of the local church.  I laughed then, but maybe it wasn’t a bad idea.  People are still looking for a sign, just as they were in Jesus’ day.

            I have heard a lot of talk about roadside signs in my lifetime, many of them negative, and I understand the concern.  The church is an undenominational entity and those signs, if they are not carefully worded, can teach things we are trying not to teach. But can I say this one thing about them?  Through the years, many people have shown up at various church doors where I worshipped because of the sign.  They remembered it from childhood.  Or maybe they remembered a neighbor who acted differently than their other neighbors, who helped their family when no one else did.  They remembered other neighbors, people who faced their own tragedy and came through it with a smile and faith intact.  Maybe they remembered the times that neighbor invited them to church and now they are in the middle of a crisis and they see a sign in front of a building that looks awfully familiar, one like the sign where their neighbor faithfully attended year after year no matter what was happening in their lives or in the world.

            That is certainly one benefit of those signs that people, including me, sometimes wish weren’t there any more, or were worded much differently.  But maybe this is what we need to concentrate on: that sign wouldn’t have done a thing in the cases I mentioned if the remembered people hadn’t been the kind of people they were. 

            Our lives are supposed to be the sign.  In a world where “Christian” can mean anything and everything, you should still be able to tell a genuine one by how he acts.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven, Matt 5:16.  If you really want people to be interested in your faith, then show them a faith worth being interested in.

            A lot of people in Jesus’ day wanted the other kind of sign.  What did Jesus have to say about that?  Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah, Matt 12:38,39.  Jesus knew that a miraculous sign would do no good.  He said as much in the parable where the rich man desired Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead as a sign to his brothers, but was told, “If they will not hear the Law and the prophets, they won’t hear if someone comes back from the dead.”  The sign on Mt Carmel ultimately did no good either.  The next morning Jezebel was still in power, able to threaten Elijah and send him running.

            No, the signs that really matter are the ones we act out in front of our friends.  Those are the signs that spark their interest and lead them to ask questions, signs that will eventually start them reading the Word of God and finding their way to Him.  Miracles didn’t work for Jesus, and he steadfastly refused to send a sign at their request.  Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, John 12:37.  What worked were his words and the life he lived, and that’s what works today.

            You are the sign people are looking for.  Word it carefully.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God, Phil 1:27,28.

Dene Ward

I have a hard time seeing cobwebs.  Every so often, Keith will grab a broom, wrap an old rag around it and go around sweeping my ceilings, especially in the corners.  He always ends up with a rag covered in lacy, pale gray webs that had hung from the white ceilings, hidden from my less than perfect vision.

            A few weeks ago, after returning from a ten day trip that combined family visits with a speaking engagement, I was exercising on the porch steps and happened to look at the screen door.  Maybe because I was concentrating on my repetitious step routine instead of simply going in and out, I saw a thick layer of cobwebs wrapped around the automatic door closer.  I looked a little higher and more hung from the hinges.  Yet a little higher and both corners were strung with white.

            These were not small cobwebs.  They were several inches in diameter and so thick the black metal door looked as if someone had splashed white paint on it.  This is what I’m saying:  they were easy to see and had been there quite awhile yet I had missed seeing them.

            Here’s a question for you.  If cobwebs were dangerous in some way, poisonous perhaps, which would be the most dangerous, the ones you can’t see, or the ones you can? 

            Let me make that a little easier for you.  Those cobwebs that Keith gets down for me?  Before he retired I might not have seen them, but I knew they were there—cobwebs always hang from the ceiling.  When any special company was on the calendar, I always got the broom and brushed them down myself.  I knew where to brush whether I could see them there or not.  The cobwebs that hang all over the screen door as clear as day?  Those I never see because I never look for them.

            When we raised our boys we taught them several ways to avoid poisonous snakes.  One was to stay away from places they could hide, like wood piles and thick brush.  We also taught them to look for odd shapes and movement in the grass—the only way to see past their natural camouflage.  But on a cold sunny day, those things won’t be in some dark place, they’ll be right out in the open, basking on a sun-warmed rock or lying in the sun-baked field.  Which ones do you think are the hardest to see, simply because you aren’t looking for them in that place?

            Now think about the dangers in your spiritual life.  Which temptations are the most perilous, the ones you know to look for or the ones you don’t bother to look for?  Which of your faults are the most dangerous?  The ones you are trying to work on, or the ones you refuse to see?

            What’s the moral of the story?  Always be looking.  Don’t fool yourself with that psychological trick called denial.  It won’t make the snakes disappear.  It won’t make the poison less venomous.  You have an enemy who isn’t stupid.  He has great camouflage.  Sometimes he looks like a friend, sometimes he looks like a blessing, sometimes he even looks like you. 

            Do a daily character exam.  Look for the cobwebs in your soul.  Look where you see them and where you don’t.  Or get someone with better eyesight to do it for you, and then listen to them.  “That’s just how I am,” may be the biggest lie anyone ever got you to believe.  Blindness is not an excuse for sin.

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds, 2 Cor 11:13,14.

Dene Ward

     Another issue Keith has always had with his hearing has been direction.  Even when he can hear something, he is not certain which direction it came from.  90% of the time he is wrong.  We have expected the implant to improve this, and it has, but not completely.  He is wrong only half the time now.  This morning he asked where the pounding was coming from and while he was close—he said north—it was actually west northwest, in fact, close to due west.  We assume this will improve just as everything else has.

     He is not the only one with this problem.  When a new Christian comes with a question about something they "heard," usually on television or a podcast, I always cringe.  Their zeal, which is commendable, often puts them on a seesaw, up with elation and then down again when they find out their new source is anything but scripture-based.  If the first thing all of us learned to do was to ask, "Where did this come from?" we might not find ourselves in such a bipolar state of mind. 

     Learn to ask yourself first, "Did this come with scripture to back it up?"  If not, then chuck it immediately.  Anyone who cannot give you a scripture-based reason, a "thus saith the Lord" as we used to say in the old days, should probably be ignored on general principle.  But suppose they give you a scripture.  Ask yourself if it contradicts any other scripture whose meaning you are certain of.  The Bible does not contradict itself.  If that person has interpreted it in such a way that two Bible principles are opposed to one another, they absolutely must be misusing scripture, perhaps out of ignorance, but perhaps not.  As much as we hate to believe such things, it is possible that this person is deliberately misleading you for the sake of his own agenda. 

     A lot of decent people have been misled by men who were out for no good but their own.  Some have lost their livelihoods; some have lost their lives; many have lost their souls.  Hon Meng Chen, Marshall Applewhite, David Koresh, Jim Jones and others you may not have heard of hoodwinked their believers into signing over their possessions, committing adultery in some cases, and ultimately facing death in any number of ways.  They all started small, with a group who believed a doctrine found nowhere but in their leader's megalomaniacal mind.  "I would never believe such a thing," I am sure they all thought several years before the fact, but ultimately, they failed to check things out.

     Keith's hearing is improving as he gains more experience with the implant, but his spiritual hearing has never been bad.  Yours can be just as good as his.  Don't be like the millions who believe a lie simply because they want to.

And then shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth, and bring to nothing by the manifestation of his coming; whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceit of unrighteousness for them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God sends them a working of error, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness 2Thess 2:8-12.

Most of you know that Keith had a cochlear implant put in earlier this year.  I have not reported much about it because it is a work in progress—a slow one.  We have learned many things and found out that most of our assumptions were not exactly correct.

     I suppose I thought that once this was in place that it always worked, that you would hear from then on.  No.  Just like any other electronic equipment, it needs a power source, in this case a battery.  That means you put it on in the morning and take it off in the evening to recharge.  I still cannot call out in the night and expect him to hear me.

     And then there is the "hearing."  The implant itself does not hear.  It simply provides an electronic signal to the auditory nerve and he must learn to translate that impulse into a normal sound or word.  Every day he practices "hearing" with either a computer program or by taking out his regular hearing aid that still sits in the other ear, and the two of us talking.  Gradually he is learning that this noise equals that word.  He is going much more quickly than most, they tell us, but it still seems slow to both of us.  He does the best when he has the hearing aid, the implant, and his usual lip reading in play, but if he is ever to reach the point that he is ready for a second implant, he must get much better using only the implant.  Otherwise, he will be lost if he still cannot "hear" with the first one.

     And then there is the sound itself.  Even when he can translate a word, it sounds more robotic than human.  Sometimes pitched too high and sometimes too low, and very often mechanical.  As one doctor put it, it sounds like a cross between Mickey Mouse and R2D2.  That too, can distort the word for him.  All in all, it is not a miracle worker.  It is plain hard work with moments of discouragement and moments of wonder.  A friend who was born deaf ultimately stopped using hers.  It wasn't worth the trouble to her.  She is not the only one who has ever felt that way.  So far Keith has found the motivation to plod on.

     The fourth week we were sitting at a stoplight waiting when suddenly he reached over and turned off the turn signal.  "How can you stand that?!" he said.  He was hearing a turn signal!  Last week he sat at the dining table and then suddenly looked up at me and said, "Is that clock ticking?"  Yes, the kitchen clock ticks.  "Why?  It runs on a battery."  But you and I would have long ago learned to ignore it.  That is a skill he is having to learn.

     Our spiritual hearing can work the same way.  Sometimes we turn it off on purpose.  If I don’t want to hear what you have to say, I won't listen.  Sometimes what you say sticks out like sore thumb because it is different.  Everyone else just tells me what I want to hear but you have the love—and guts—to tell me what I need to hear.  Sometimes it sounds off a little because that is exactly what it is.  I am supposed to be able to tell truth from falsehood, especially in regard to God's Word.  If it doesn't sound right, don't just accept it or even just ignore it—look it up yourself.  I have seen Keith looking at me and others strangely a time or two as he hears these strange sounds that are voices he must learn all over again to recognize.

     And sometimes what you hear can be the thing that saves your soul.  When you recognize it, you should instantly want more.  You should work harder and harder to understand it because you know your eternal life depends upon it.  You have the motivation while others do not—you believe and they don't. 

     Check your hearing this morning.  Do you need an implant?  Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls Jas 1:21.  The Word of God is worth hearing and obeying.  Don't take it out and turn it off because it offends you or because it takes some work to understand.  Your soul depends on how well you hear.

Therefore speak I to them in parables; because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And unto them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which says, By hearing you shall hear, and shall in no wise understand; And seeing you shall see, and shall in no wise perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, And their ears are dull of hearing, And their eyes they have closed; Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, And should turn again, And I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear  Matt 13:13-16.

Dene Ward

The first time he said it I was confused.  The second time I was a little miffed. 

            “We’re going home,” Keith told someone of our upcoming visit to his parents’ house in Arkansas, early in our marriage.

            Home?  Home was where I was, where we lived together, not someplace 1100 miles away.

            I suppose I didn’t understand because I didn’t have that sense of home.  We moved a few times when I was a child, and then my parents moved more after I married.  I never use that phrase “back home” of any place but where I live at the moment.  But a lot of people do.  I hear them talk about it often, going “back home” to reunions and homecomings, visiting the places they grew up and knew from before they could remember.

            But what was it the American author Thomas Wolfe said?  “You can’t go home again.”  Those words have come to mean that you cannot relive childhood memories.  Things are constantly changing and you will always be disappointed.

            Abraham and Sarah and the other early patriarchs did not believe that. 

            These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. Hebrews 11:13-14.

            That phrase “country of their own” is the Greek word for “Fatherland” or “homeland” or “native country.”  Those people believed they were headed home in the same sense that Keith talked about going back to the Ozarks.  Some question whether the people of the Old Testament believed in life after death.  They not only believed they were going to live in that promised country after death, they believed they had come from there—that it was where they belonged.

            That may be our biggest problem.  We do not understand that we belong in Heaven, that God sent us from there and wants us back, that it is the Home we are longing for, the only place that will satisfy us.  We are too happy here, too prosperous in this life, too secure on this earth. 

            Try asking someone if they want to go to Heaven.  “Of course,” they will say.  Then ask if they would like to go now and see the difference in their response.  It is good that we have attachments here, and a sense of duty to those people.  It is not good when we see those attachments as far better than returning to our homeland and our Father and Brother.  Paul said, For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if to live in the flesh, - if this shall bring fruit from my work, then what I shall choose I know not. But I am in a strait between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better: yet to abide in the flesh is more needful for your sake. Philippians 1:21-24.   Paul knew the better choice.  Staying here for the Philippians’ sake was a sacrifice to him, a necessary evil.

            Heaven isn’t supposed to be like an all-expenses-paid vacation away from home—it’s supposed to be Home—the only Home that matters.

            How do you view Heaven?  The way you see it may just make the difference in how easy or difficult it is for you to get there.

Being therefore always of good courage, and knowing that, while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk by faith, not by sight); we are of good courage, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord, 2 Corinthians 5:6-8.

Dene Ward