By TODD HORNE
With my voice I cry to the Lord; with my voice I make supplication to the Lord.
Have you ever lost your voice?
I have.
Three, actually almost four years ago now, an outpatient surgical procedure I was undergoing went awry. I asphyxiated on the table. After the doctor and nurses revived me on the operating table and I woke up, even though I did not know what had happened, I did know that I had the worst sore throat you can imagine. The process of bringing me back to life involved the serious jamming of things down my throat and my vocal chords — well, they must have been in the way. We each have two and one of mine suffered permanent damage in the process of being restored to life, I would later find out. While I was grateful to be alive, I could not speak at all for several months until my voice began to regain strength and finally one day I could muster a whisper.
When you have lost your voice, you come to understand just how valuable it is. You no longer take it for granted. I lost my voice for almost a year. Once powerful, it came back. But it came back weaker. Not coincidentally — since I now know how much I appreciate what it means to have a voice — I do not use it in the same way I used it before. Now I reserve the use of my voice mainly to cry to the Lord and to ask him for help, as Psalms 142:1 says. Ironically, when my voice was strong and virile, it was basically a slave to an unbridled tongue that fluttered and flailed, the whim of a misguided heart that beat passionately for itself. Now, I submit myself to the Lord every minute of every day and He transforms my heart. I realize am weak; I know that I am weak. And every time I speak I am reminded just how weak I am. Without God, I now know I have nothing. Without God, I know that there is nothing. This is what I know now literally every time I go to speak. Losing my voice was a blessing from the Lord. Using my restored voice the way God intended for me to use it blesses God.
Even though God likes me to use my voice to be thankful and grateful to Him, God is real. He is not in denial. He is not Polly-Annish. God wants you to tell Him like it is — the way you see it. God can, and will, listen to and handle your complaints. The key here is for us to be real. We need to listen to what we are saying, and to be honest with ourselves. And, be honest with God. By talking frankly and honestly with God, God will reveal to us what is going in our hearts. He already knows what is going in our hearts. But because the heart is so deceptive, we do not know. We are often the last person to know what is going on in our hearts.
In my experience, life can be very difficult at times. These difficult times in our lives are made radically more difficult when we refuse to see things from God’s vantage point and with hard heads, stiff necks and chronically hardening hearts.
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