The ability to hear has got to be one of the most important senses people have.

… I guess we could have a discussion on which of the five senses is most important. I’m sure we would have some disagreement. 

Some would say that sight is the top sense. Others would say it is taste that’s number one. 

If, before you finished eating breakfast, you already started thinking of what you might enjoy for lunch, well, you may think taste is the top sense.

The truth is all our senses are very important and no one would want to give up any of them. It is our senses that enrich our lives.

Hearing is a sense that is vital in so many ways. 

In fact, hearing is so important you would think we would all have a back up for hearing, just in case something went wrong. 

Truthfully, we are lousy at trying to determine what someone is saying by watching their mouth move. 

When they can’t hear, many people will just nod and pretend that they’ve heard what the other person is saying. In a loud room, people will look interested and nod. They may say something like, “yes” and “that’s right”. 

We’ve all done it, hoping that our response is in line with what the other person said. 

 If we were just better at reading lips, life could be easier.

This week I gave a livestream talk on YouTube. 

One morning a week, I give a reflection on a passage in the Bible, along with some personal thoughts.

The thing about being live is that if something goes wrong with the equipment or the technology or even the sound, you have to deal with it right then. 

The other week my camera fell off the tripod just before I went live (you can read about it here). All people saw was a black screen and heard me saying, “Oh no, what am I going to do now?”

This week, for some reason which I still have not figured out, the sound wasn’t going through. 

Of course I didn’t know it and was talking away to the camera like there was nothing wrong. 

I was getting into my talk when I started to get some text messages to my phone. I ignored the first one, but then I got a second and a third. So I pulled my phone out of my pocket and it started ringing. 

It was my wife, Lily, telling me that no one could hear me. 

Right at that moment I wished people were better lip readers. 

If they were, they never would have skipped a beat. The people watching would have been able to decipher what I was saying and I could have carried on. 

But we are lousy lip readers, so dependent on sound to know what someone is saying.

I typed in the chat section that I would record the talk and upload it later to YouTube (you can watch it here). 

I knew my audience wouldn’t be able to read my lips.

Here’s the thing: We are so programmed in how we hear from God. If He doesn’t use those methods to communicate to us, we don’t hear Him. Be open to hear God speak to you in different ways. In a spiritual way, learn to lip read and don’t miss what God is communicating to you. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How may God have tried to communicate to you in the past but you missed it? Leave your comments and questions below.

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