Ear Augmentation
Pre-Op Preparation for an Ear Augmentation
You have to be saved
You have to humble yourself
Post-Op Care for an Ear Augmentation
Be in the Word
Be in Prayer
Slide 1
We started a series last week called Extreme Makeover: God Edition.
Manyof us at some point seem to want something changed about ourselves. We would like a
nose job or
tummy tuck or
something enlarged or
something shrunk.
We often think that those things will make life better for us.
But what if we just asked God to change us so that life could be better?
What changes would He make to us?
We talked last week about God starting with our heart – that He would give us a heart Transplant so that we could better be able to
Love God
Love People
Live it out!
What other areas would He change so our life could be better?
One area that I think God would change is our ears.
Oh Good, some of you may say.
My ears are not even on my head, so I hope He evens them out.
Or
think we look like Dumbo, with ears that are too big.
look better with smaller ears.
Some people thought Ross Perot had big ears and he even joked about it when he was running for president.
Someone wanted to ask him a question and he said, “I’m all ears!”
But I don’t think God would shrink our ears.
Slide 2
In fact, I think God would do an Ear Augmentation.
He would make them bigger so that we could hear Him better.
Sometimes we think God doesn’t hear us, but
The fact of the matter is, is that we have hearing problems.
Illustration
There was a man who thought his wife had a hearing problem, she never responded when He asked her something.
To prove this while she was reading the paper one day walked across the room and said in a normal voice, “Can you hear me now.”
The man heard no response.
He took a few steps closer and said, “Can you hear me now.”
Again the man heard no response from his wife.
A few more steps closer and the same thing, no response,
Finally, He gets right behind her and says “Can you hear me now.”
And to his surprise she says, “For the fourth time, I can hear you.”
It isn’t God who can’t hear, it is us.
Now before you get all worried, God is probably not going to physically change the size of your ears, but He does want us to better be able to hear Him.
And that is the important thing.
We don’t just need bigger ears to hear more of everything else.
We need bigger ears to hear Him.
Jesus often spoke in parables and in several places, we see him end with a phrase such as
Slide 3
Matthew 11:15; 13:9, 43
He who has ears, let him hear.
Or when warning the 7 churches in Revelation, He says
Rev 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 22
He who has an ear, let him hear
He wants people to
think about and
hear
what He has to say.
He wants the same thing for us today.
He wants us to have ears to hear.
So let’s let the Lord do an Extreme Makeover Ear Augmentation on us today.
Before we are ready to have that happen, we need to first talk about the
Slide 4
Pre-Op Preparation for an Ear Augmentation
If we are not prepared to receive the ear augmentation, it will not be effective.
We won’t hear God any better than we do now.
Just like someone going in for a real, physical surgery needs to do certain things like
Not eat,
Take certain medicines,
Etc, so their body is prepared for the surgery,
Some specific things need to occur in our own lives before we receive an Ear augmentation if it is going to produce the desired results of us hearing God better.
First,
You need to be Saved
Slide 5
John 8:47
47 He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God."
We talked about salvation in our message on heart transplant last week. So I just want to cover this briefly this week.
You may come to church every week.
You may read the Bible every day.
You may watch and listen to Christian TV and radio.
You may give money to the church and other charities.
But until you stop and receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, you will never truly be able to hear what God has to say to you in directing your life.
I said last week that we needed to start with the heart transplant because if we didn’t, none of the other makeover “surgeries” would take without it.
It would be like giving a dead person a hearing aid. It really would not help.
So if you are truly wanting to hear
the deeper things that God wants to say to you,
the direction that He wants to give to your life
then you need to begin by hearing the basic message that God is speaking to all men, the message of salvation through Jesus Christ.
This gospel message is available to everyone and is something that everyone can hear. God has said that He wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:3)
Have you come to the point yet of realizing that following your own voice does really not work so well.
If you are going to be able to discern God’s will for your life, you must receive Jesus as your Savior.
Now just receiving Jesus as your Savior does not mean that you will now know all things and know exactly what it is that God wants you to do. Any Christian will tell you that is false.
A second thing that needs to happen for you to hear what God has for you is
You need to Humble Yourself
Slide 6
Psalm 25:9
He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.
Proverbs 11:2
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
To
receive the wisdom of God and
hear his teaching
so that it can direct our lives, we need to live humbly before the Lord.
If you do not, your ear augmentation will not take.
If you have a spirit of pride, you are only going to hear what you want to hear.
Paul wrote Timothy about such people.
He said in
2 Timothy 4:3-4
3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
They had a spirit of pride. They wanted to do what they wanted to do and they surrounded themselves with people who would tell them what they wanted to hear.
They are like King Ahab.
Here was a king who was
wicked and
did only what he wanted.
He would not listen to the Lord’s prophet Elijah, nor would he listen to the Lord’s prophet Micaiah.
In 1 Kings 22, King Ahab wanted to go to war and wanted the help of King Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah. King Jehoshaphat wanted to inquire of the Lord first so King Ahab brought out 400 prophets who would say what the King Ahab wanted to hear.
1 Kings 22:7-8
7 But Jehoshaphat asked, "Is there not a prophet of the LORD here whom we can inquire of?"
8 The king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, "There is still one man through whom we can inquire of the LORD, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah."
"The king should not say that," Jehoshaphat replied.
So they get Micaiah and he prophesies against the king going to war and says that the king will die but King Ahab doesn’t want to hear that. His pride wants to win back the territory that he lost. So he goes to war and is killed.
Don’t be like King Ahab and let your pride keep you from hearing what God wants you to hear. There are going to be times that what God has to say may not be what we want to hear, but we need to hear.
We need to be humble enough to follow even when initially, it may not be what we want. God certainly will lead us the best way for our long term, eternal best interest.
So now, we have prepared ourselves for God to do our Ear Augmentation. He spiritually expands our ears so that we can better hear what He has to say.
But just as we had some pre-op preparations, after God opens our ears to hear, there is some
Post-Op Care for an Ear Augmentation
Slide 7
Whenever you have an operation, and leave the hospital, you are going to have certain things that you are going to have to do to make sure that things continue to go smoothly.
You will need to keep the area clean if you had surgery.
If you received a new knee or a new hip, you will have to get up and start using it.
Well when God does an Ear Augmentation on you, you are going to need to start using your new ears so that your ability to use them will grow.
So the first thing you need to do after receiving your Ear Augmentation, is to
Be in the Word
Slide 8
Romans 10:17
faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
If we want
our faith to be grown and
to be prepared to do the things God wants us to do,
then we need to be in the word of God.
There is no other way for us to grow in our understanding of what God wants us to do than to be in the word.
“Well what about through teaching and preaching?”
Yes, you can grow and learn to a point with just teaching and preaching, but it is when you personally are in the Word of God that God will truly be able to guide and direct you
And when you are doing that, the teaching and preaching you hear becomes even more valuable, because God takes what he has taught you and combines it with the things you are hearing and learning with your new augmented ears and convicts and challenges you through the Spirit to new levels of commitment where you will find peace and joy that surpasses all understanding.
Maybe you are saying, when I read on my own, I don’t understand it.
or I understand it but I can’t but it doesn’t apply to me.
Well if you have received Jesus as your Savior and you humble yourself before the Lord, that is when God gives you that ear augmentation and you now have ears that will be able to hear Him better.
Be part of a Connection Group. This is a great way to exercise your new ears to find out what God has to say to you.
You get to meet other people and discuss the word of God together which helps you grow in your understanding and gives us other people to help us apply it.
And we need to apply it.
James 1:22-25
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-he will be blessed in what he does.
For the word to have impact on our life, we need to apply it to our living. When we have others who can keep us accountable, then we are going to be more successful at applying God’s word to our lives.
Whatever you do, you need to exercise your ears by being in the Word of God so you can Hear what He has to say to you.
Secondly, you need to
Be in Prayer
Slide 9
James 1:5
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.
We need to be praying and asking God for His wisdom as we study and listen to His word.
The psalmist writes in
Ps 119:169
May my cry come before you, O LORD;
give me understanding according to your word.
Pray that God, by the power of the Spirit will give you insight and understanding.
John 16:13
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.
It is the Spirit of God that will guide us and we will be able to hear Him better because we have had a heart transplant, and we have gotten and ear Augmentation.
Pray in the power of the Spirit for His guidance as you read the word and hear with fresh ears.
My prayer for you is that same as Paul’s to the Philippians.
Philippians 1:9-11
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God.
Conclusion
Receive Jesus as our Savior and
humble yourselves before Him by being
willing to follow His ways for your life,
then the Lord will open our ears to hear Him through His Word and through prayer.
Receive an ear augmentation from the Lord today or at least begin taking the steps necessary to receive His makeover by receiving Jesus as Savior today.
If you have never received Him and your heart wants to, then pray along with me and tell the Lord your desire now.
Pray
