So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17 King James Bible)

Most helicopter pilots, and probably jet pilots and maintainers too, have some hearing loss through their careers in the military.  These big beasts of burden produce some volume, and over time it does it’s damage.  Many times during the annual physical screening the medical staff asks if you want to re-baseline your hearing because a lot of times you perform substantially worse than you did years ago.  Most pilots they don’t want to do this because it lessens the chances of compensation from hearing loss when they retire.  I’ve had a different experience since I started wearing what’s called a “hush kit” – my hearing test scores have improved.  I know, weird huh?

Well, sometimes I’m sure other people would wonder if my hearing is so good – why I don’t hear them talk to me.  I think it’s a listening problem really.  There’s a lot more to communication than hearing someone talk because of the volume they use (although that’s a part of it).  But my point in all of this is that there is a way the Bible says we can hear – it’s by the Word of God.  Other translations say by or through the words of Christ or the message of the Messiah.  I really like that.  I see a progression there – back to front, so to speak, from listening to the words of Jesus, so that you can hear, so that you have faith.

Making the jump back and forth from the physical relm to the spiritual, as I like to do from time to time, maybe listening to the Word has helped my physical hearing as well as my spiritual hearing.  Over the last couple months I’ve been listening to the “Word of Promise” pictured above – fully dramatized NT, which has been awesome.  I’m still a work in progress, but doing this is like when the construction guys get to work on the highways in the late hours of the night – it produces results – even if it takes a while to see them.

I encourage you all to listen to the Word regularly (in addition to reading, studying, memorizing and meditating on it) but don’t stop there; like James says, be doers of the word also, not just hearers (James 1:22).  Cause if you don’t do it, people might think you have a hearing problem.