Recently a deaf person emailed me a letter
that profoundly touched me. I don’t have permission to print it—hopefully, at
some point, I will—but I wanted to share my response with her. I have a large
contingent of deaf and hearing-impaired people who follow my blog. Her
struggles are universal also, not just confined to those who are hearing
disabled. I pray that my thoughts are Godly and thought-provoking. Salvation is
a momentary decision but can take a lifetime of surrendering. Wherever you are
in that decision, after reading this blog post, please share. This may be your
moment….don’t waste it.
By Lorilyn Roberts
Satan’s biggest deception is to masquerade as an angel of light. He
wants to trick us into believing, if it were possible, that Jesus Christ is not
the answer. The paradox is that God made us both strong and weak. We are strong
in the sense that we fight for life at all costs, longing for what He gave us
in the beginning – eternal life. We are weak in the sense that true happiness
can’t be found except in our relationship with Him. If Satan can convince us we
can be as God, our pride will make us reluctant to admit we need anyone or
anything else. Humility lies at the beginning of the road to salvation.
There are many kinds of prisons and you’ve found one of them – the
bottle. Prisons null our pain, but they also take away our freedom—most
importantly, the freedom to choose. God also never takes away our freedom to
fail but will never not give us what we need to succeed. The devil will give
you what you think you want—God will give you Himself. Some prisoners will go to
their grave having sold their soul to the devil—for this world and the next. For
what? A lie.
Ultimate freedom in Christ will never take away your freedom of
choice. If you have made idols of your wants or lowered your expectations of
what will make you happy, you will be imprisoned in your mind to false gods
that will do nothing to save your soul. Sin feels good at the time, but a
moment of bliss can bring a lifetime of regret. Ultimately, sin will destroy
your ability to hear God’s voice. Don’t forget, eternity is forever. We will
all spend eternity in heaven or in hell. The choice is ours.
You are strong in the sense you have found freedom by conquering your
dependency on alcohol. God has blessed you with a spouse to love and cherish. As
you have discovered, however, it’s not enough to be free FROM something. We
need to find our freedom IN something.
There is not enough of anything in this world to bring us complete
happiness. There is not enough power ball money, adoration of fans, cushy jobs,
plastic surgery, or computer gadgets to fill our hearts. We aren’t made to have
a relationship with idols. We are made for a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Without Him, all other pursuits may bring partial or temporary happiness, but
they are fleeting at best.
That brings me to the root of your quest for answers. Who is God? You
were born deaf, and your whole life has been devoted to overcoming this
limitation in order to survive in a world where nearly everyone else hears. You
feel flawed, shortchanged, and your perceptions have influenced many of the
choices you have made, both good and bad.
Has it ever occurred to you that God made you that way for a purpose? You
might ask me, “Why would God do that?”
People ask that question in reference to their own “flaws” or
“disappointments” or “lot in life” hundreds of time each day. I have asked
myself that same question – I even ask it of others. Why did God take away my
friend’s eyesight?
Why did my beautiful adopted daughter from Nepal suffer for years with
seizures? Why did God allow her to drink contaminated water from Nepal that
gave her a brain infection? Why are there 150 million orphans around the world
with little hope of being adopted?
My goal is not to make you feel guilty or to compare your disability
with others. You have already done that plenty of times. We all have. That is
part of Satan’s ploy, to guilt us into feeling like we are no good, or trick us
into comparing ourselves with others with a legalistic yardstick—God does not measure
our value in such a demonic, meaningless way.
We need to remember how much our sin grieves God. It took the death of
His Son, Jesus Christ, to make it possible for us to enter into the kingdom of
heaven. Can we know the evilness of sin and appreciate the price God paid in
our fallen, depraved state? We can’t see it—except through suffering. We see
sin when we see a young child die of cancer. We see sin on the battlefield during
war, in a car accident that devastates a family, in a drug overdose that kills a
young person, and in the sex trafficking trade in Nepal and India. We shake our
fist at those things and proclaim the wickedness of man, aghast that any decent
human being could rip out a young girl’s genitals and sell her as a slave. We
cringe and become angry—angry at what we know is wrong and inhumane.
Our infirmities remind us of our need for Jesus Christ. We are driven
to repent when we realize how weak we are in spirit to do even one good thing.
Our blindness and deafness and diseases awaken us from an indifferent slumber
and instill in us a longing for the day God will wipe away every tear. We don’t
suffer in vain—we suffer for God’s glory. If we give our weaknesses to Him,
something supernatural happens within us that is more powerful than anything
man can invent or achieve. The Holy Spirit makes us bold and enables us to let go
of past hurts and forgive. We are compelled to take our eyes off of ourselves
and focus our hearts and minds on the one who created us. We remember once
again we aren’t made for this world. We are made for eternity.
Your ability to rise above your deafness can only take you so far—it
can’t overcome that emptiness within you that only the Holy Spirit can fill. In
fact, Jesus Christ is so much bigger than your deafness, that if you truly
allowed Him into your heart, your heart couldn’t contain Him. You would burst
with joy—not that you are deaf, but that He’d given you so much joy. You would thank
your deafness for allowing you the privilege of bringing others into the
kingdom.
God has given each person many gifts. He has given you a gift of
writing. If you want God to use you to help others, you need to claim one gift
which you have not yet unwrapped. You need to claim His gift of salvation.
You have figured out how to live in this world marginally happy, but
you know there is something missing. You are using the freedom God gave you to reject
Him—His love for you and His salvation for you—forever. Forever is a very long
time. If you die as a believer, you will be given a new body with perfect
hearing. The greatest gift you will receive in heaven will be your appreciation
for what you never had here. I believe my greatest gift will be the
unconditional love of Jesus—the assurance that He will never leave me—I fear
being abandoned.
What we don’t have here for God’s glory will be magnified in heaven,
poured out, given with such generosity it will be as the stars that shine down
on us or the sands that cover the seashore. If God lavished us with those
perfect gifts here, would we really appreciate them? How many people have died
lonely and broken—seemingly who had everything? How many truly happy people
live in Hollywood? It is out of our need that God fills us, for then we know
without Him, we are needy. The nothingness is what draws us to Him and enables
us to be used by Him. We become His witness, His voice, His legs, His eyes, His ears, and His servants. We become part of the Great Commission.
Ask yourself: How can I use my deafness to draw people into a
relationship with Jesus Christ? Use the one thing you don’t have to glorify
Him—and you will find that your greatest suffering and need will become your
greatest asset and joy.
Remember also, God loves you. He loves you more than you can imagine.
Someday you will stand before heaven’s gates—will they open and allow you to
enter? Don’t let anyone take away your desire to know the truth. As the Bible
says, the truth will set you free. The search for answers will lead you down
paths that only God can answer, that won’t be found in bottles of wine or quick
fixes that lead to death.
I want to share a short excerpt from my book, Seventh Dimension – The Door, about a young girl who spent her
whole life bullied and rejected by others. She was imprisoned by her worthless and
destructive self-image. Read what the King did and ask yourself, is this not
me?
Then the king turned towards me. I now knew
the king completely—as my heavenly father, the father who loved me, the father
who would never leave me or forsake me.
“Your
sins are forgiven.” He held out his hands and the fresh scars on his wrists
overwhelmed me. Tears flowed freely. He said, “I go to prepare
a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I
will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be
also.”
A birdcage gently floated down from the sky
and landed in his outstretched hands. He took the cage and hung it on an olive
tree. A small bird sat inside the cage. The king opened the door to the cage
and the small creature walked from its perch and alighted on his finger. He
lifted the bird out of the cage, kissed it, and whispered, “You are a daughter
of the king.”
I realized at that moment, he was saying those words to me. I
felt his tender kiss on my forehead. I gazed into the sky as the bird flew into
the heavens. Before I could say anything, the king was gone.
In Luke 4:18, Jesus said, "The
Spirit of the LORD is upon me, for He has anointed me to bring Good News to the
poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind
will see, that the oppressed will be set free.”
You’ve
been a prisoner long enough. Jesus, the King wants to set you free. He has
opened the door to your heart, just as He opened the door to the bird cage for
Shale and set her free. Don’t delay. Invite Jesus into your heart, ask Him to
forgive you of all your sins, receive the Holy Spirit, and begin the first day
of the rest of your life. You have a story to tell that only you can share.
Someone needs to hear it, not the least of which is me. I want to know what
Jesus has done in your life. Please share it in the comments below.
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