>>> The Voice We Ignore
There is a universal gesture that needs no translation. It crosses cultures, languages, borders, and time zones. Teenagers use it. Grandkids use it. Some husbands use it. And nearly every wife has perfected it. It’s the motion that says: “I am not receiving incoming messages at this time.”
The hand goes up.
The head turns slightly.
The eyes go somewhere else.
And the message is clear.
“Talk to the hand.”
Now we use it as a joke—an ironic shield, a dramatic boundary. But if we’re honest, that same gesture has a spiritual version. We don’t raise the physical hand, but we do raise something inside us—a wall, a resistance, a shrug, a hesitation, a voice that whispers: “Not now, Lord… not today… later… maybe… after I sort this out.”
We may never say it, but heaven knows we’ve done it:
“God… talk to the hand.”
And here’s what startles me every time I read Scripture:
We are not the first ones to do that. God’s people have been dodging His voice from the beginning.
Adam hid.
Israel hardened their hearts.
Jonah booked a cruise in the opposite direction.
Balaam pretended not to hear until the donkey started talking.
The rich young ruler heard the very voice of Jesus and walked away sad.
Felix trembled but said, “Go away. When I have a convenient season, I’ll call for you.”
Humanity’s default instinct toward God has almost never been enthusiastic obedience—it has been resistance.
We want burning bushes.
We want angels.
We want open-field concerts like the shepherds.
We want a talking donkey just to spice up the week.
But the irony is breathtaking:
The same people who beg God to speak are often the same people who freeze when He does.
That brings us to a quiet but thunderous text:
> “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”
—Psalm 95 / Hebrews 3–4
It is God’s gentle way of saying: “Take your hand down. Listen. I’m speaking.”
And yet many of us live years—decades—feeling like we’ve never really heard His voice. Never seen a sign. Never felt a clear directive. Never had the burning bush. Never had the donkey. Never had the handwriting on the wall. Never heard the thunder from Sinai.
Sometimes you want to shout into the heavens:
“Lord, if You want my attention, could You please use something visible? Audible? Preferably dramatic? Something with special effects?”
And then God whispers back:
“I’ve been speaking all along.”
But the problem is not always the volume of His voice.
It is the condition of our ears.
And this is where Hebrews takes us somewhere unexpected. The writer does something radical, something translators have been smoothing out for centuries. In Hebrews 4:8, when describing the wilderness generation and the lost promise of rest, the Greek text uses one name: Iesous—the same name used for Jesus.
Some translations say Joshua.
Some say Jesus.
But the writer’s point is unmistakable:
The voice in Psalm 95 is not Joshua’s voice.
It is God’s voice.
And the God who spoke then is Jesus who speaks now.
Jesus is the One who gave the Sabbath rest at creation.
Jesus is the One Israel resisted in the desert.
Jesus is the One David wrote about.
Jesus is the One speaking “Today… if you hear My voice.”
So the question Hebrews forces onto our lap is simple:
Why don’t we hear Him?
If the Lord of creation is speaking—
If the God of Sinai is still addressing His people—
If the Shepherd’s voice still calls out to His sheep—
Why do so many of us feel like we’re catching nothing but static?
Let’s be honest.
Some people feel like the heavens are brass.
Some feel like God is silent.
Some feel like their prayers hit the ceiling and slide back down the wall.
Some feel like they have served God faithfully and yet never had a single burning-bush moment.
And deep down, we envy Abraham who got a personal visit.
We envy Elijah who heard the whisper.
We envy Mary who got an angel.
We envy Moses who saw divine flame dancing on desert bark.
We envy Balaam who at least got a talking donkey—because frankly, that would at least make for a great story at potluck.
But here is the part we rarely think through:
Every one of those dramatic moments happened to people who were not listening the first time.
Moses saw the bush because he had avoided Egypt for forty years.
Jonah got a fish because he said “Talk to the hand” to God’s call.
Balaam got a donkey because he was blinded by greed.
Gideon got fleece because he doubted the angel standing right in front of him.
Peter got the rooftop vision three times because he argued with the Lord of the universe.
Paul got knocked off his horse because he was running hard in the wrong direction.
In other words…
The burning bush is not a reward for spirituality.
It is a rescue for stubbornness.
The donkey is not a testimony to Balaam’s faith.
It is a testimony to God’s mercy.
The handwriting on the wall did not come to a faithful king.
It came to Belshazzar in judgment.
The thunder of Sinai wasn’t a sweet devotional experience.
It terrified an entire nation into begging God to stop talking.
Dramatic encounters are not always evidence of spiritual maturity.
More often they are proof of spiritual danger.
So if you have never had a burning bush moment,
never heard an audible voice,
never seen fire fall,
never witnessed a miracle with your own eyes…
That might not mean God is ignoring you.
It might mean you’re not in the kind of trouble that requires a donkey to talk.
But let me go deeper.
There is a reason Hebrews 4 keeps repeating the word Today.
There is a reason Psalm 95’s warning is still relevant.
There is a reason Jesus says, “My sheep hear My voice.”
Because God’s voice is not primarily in the spectacular.
It is in the steady.
The persistent.
The familiar.
The whisper under the noise.
And most of the time, we miss it because we are waiting for the dramatic while God is speaking through the ordinary.
We think a sign must glow.
We think a voice must echo.
We think a miracle must defy physics.
But the God of Scripture is the God who hides in burning bushes and in broken hearts,
who speaks through angels and through ordinary people,
who thunders on Sinai and whispers in quietness.
The real question is not:
“Why doesn’t God speak spectacularly?”
The real question is:
“Why do we only recognize God when He speaks spectacularly?”
Because if Scripture shows us anything, it is this:
God is always speaking.
We are not always listening.
Every “Talk to the Hand” is really:
“Lord, I want to hear You…
but not that way…
not about that issue…
not at this time…
not if it costs me…
not if it reveals me…
not if it sends me somewhere uncomfortable.”
So Hebrews presses the point:
Today.
Not tomorrow.
Not when the fleece is wet.
Not after the sign.
Not after the burning bush.
Not after the donkey moves his jaw.
Not after the angel choir fills the night.
Today.
If you hear His voice…
do not harden your heart.
Because the danger is not that God stops speaking.
The danger is that we become people who no longer notice when He does.
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>>> The Higher the Calling, the Thinner the Air
When Scripture warns us, “Do not harden your hearts,” it is not talking about plaque, arteries, stents, bypasses, or the circulatory system. Hardened hearts in the Bible are not about calcification — they’re about resistance.
Not about blocked arteries — about blocked obedience.
Not about blood flow — about truth flow.
Not about a medical emergency — about a spiritual one.
A hardened heart is simply the place inside us where the hand quietly goes up and the soul whispers, “Not now, Lord. Not that issue. Not that forgiveness. Not that calling. Not that sacrifice. Talk to the hand.”
And here’s the strange, almost paradoxical thing:
Some of the hardest hearts belong to people who feel deeply, cry easily, love sincerely, and worship passionately.
Because hardness is not a lack of emotion; it is a lack of yielding.
It’s not a cold heart.
It’s a closed heart.
It’s not sclerotic arteries.
It’s sclerotic attitudes.
You can’t fix that with surgery.
You can’t fix it with supplements.
You can’t fix it with nitrous oxide from the dentist’s office.
And you certainly can’t fix it with nitric oxide, even if your cardiologist swears by it.
Though… nitric oxide does give us a stunning metaphor.
A while ago, I went into the high mountains of Colorado for a week to hike and camp. I'm in my sixties, and I have no business being above 13,000 feet unless the Lord personally carries me on a cloud. But for a couple of years I’d been taking nitric oxide supplements, and I brought them along. At that altitude—where the air thins, the pressure changes, and the lungs protest—I never got altitude sickness. I could breathe. I could climb. I could function.
Why? Because nitric oxide does something remarkable in the human body:
It opens the vessels.
It increases flow.
It reduces pressure.
It helps you breathe at altitude.
It keeps you going in places your body is not naturally designed to go.
And suddenly… it hit me.
That’s exactly what grace does for the soul.
But we’re not done with the metaphor yet, because I want to tell you a story.
Years ago, a professional basketball player, an All-Star at the top of his game, flew into Denver to play at high altitude. If you’ve ever been in Denver in the winter, you know it’s basically a beautiful postcard with oxygen rationing.
First half of the game?
He bombed.
Couldn’t breathe.
Sluggish.
Dragging.
Barely scoring.
His legs were there, but the power wasn’t.
Then he realized something.
He had forgotten to bring the nitric oxide supplement he always used to handle high altitude.
So what did he do?
At halftime, desperate and embarrassed by the first half, he made a call. He reached out to someone he trusted who knew people in Denver. They arranged an emergency delivery during the break — and he took it right before the second half began.
What happened next?
He walked back onto the court like a different human being.
Explosive.
Focused.
Alive.
He scored nearly 40 points in one half.
The altitude didn’t change.
But what was flowing inside him did.
And that is exactly how grace works.
We walk into spiritual altitude all the time:
A marriage that feels impossible.
A temptation that feels relentless.
A calling that feels too high.
A ministry that feels too heavy.
A crisis that feels too deep.
A forgiveness we don't want to give.
A step of faith we’re afraid to take.
A sin we don’t want to face.
A truth we don’t want to swallow.
We walk into these moments, and suddenly the air gets thin.
We can’t breathe.
We can’t pray.
We can’t obey.
We can’t forgive.
We can’t worship.
We can’t move.
And we feel miserable —
not because God is punishing us,
not because life is unfair,
not because the mountain is too high…
but because we forgot our grace.
We are trying to climb spiritual peaks in the strength of the flesh.
We are trying to breathe thin air with human lungs.
We are trying to live the Christian life without the Christian power.
Grace is the NO of the soul.
The spiritual vasodilator.
The divine oxygen carrier.
The holy pressure reducer.
Grace does for your spirit what nitric oxide does for your body:
It opens what sin constricts.
It flows where shame tightens.
It reduces the pressure of performance.
It brings oxygen into suffocating places.
It keeps you alive at altitude.
And here is the part that ties this entire message together:
When we raise the hand at God —
when we resist, delay, deflect, avoid —
when we say, “Talk to the hand” —
we cut off the very grace that would have kept us alive.
The hand we raise in resistance
becomes the hand that blocks our oxygen.
The very place where we say “Not now, Lord,”
becomes the very place where the soul begins to suffocate.
You don’t get altitude sickness in the valley.
You get it when you climb.
And many believers collapse not because the mountain is too steep,
but because they climbed it without grace.
Do you see how this connects?
The wilderness generation didn’t miss the Promised Land because the mountain was too high —
but because the heart was too hard.
Hebrews 4 says:
> “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”
Why?
Because God is not trying to make you miserable.
He is trying to make you able.
He is trying to open the vessels.
He is trying to increase flow.
He is trying to give you oxygen for obedience.
He is trying to give you power for calling.
He is trying to give you breath for battle.
He is trying to give you strength for surrender.
He is not withholding grace.
We are withholding yielding.
We say, “Talk to the hand,”
and grace says, “Then I can’t flow through that.”
We block the very thing we need to survive spiritual elevation.
And God says:
> “Let Me open what’s closed.
Let Me soften what’s rigid.
Let Me breathe into what’s suffocating.
Let Me give the grace you forgot to bring up the mountain.”
Because the higher the calling,
the thinner the air.
And the thinner the air,
the more grace God pours out.
He gives more grace.
That is His promise.
That is His NO for the soul.
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>>>Breathing Again
At some point in every Christian’s life, the question rises quietly, honestly, vulnerably:
“Is grace the oxygen of heaven?”
I believe the answer is not only yes —
but that Scripture has been showing us this reality from the very beginning.
Grace is not seasoning for the spiritual meal.
Grace is not the cherry on top of salvation.
Grace is not an optional doctrine you sprinkle lightly over good behavior.
Grace is the atmosphere of God.
Grace is the breath of eternity.
Grace is the oxygen of heaven — the very air the redeemed breathe.
Without grace, the soul suffocates long before it falls.
Without grace, holiness becomes altitude sickness.
Without grace, obedience becomes gasping.
Without grace, repentance becomes impossible.
Without grace, the Christian life becomes a climb with no oxygen tank.
When God calls us upward — and He always does —
He calls us into spiritual altitudes that our flesh cannot survive.
You cannot climb into forgiveness on sheer willpower.
You cannot climb into obedience on raw discipline.
You cannot climb into holiness on human strength.
You cannot climb into your calling on natural talent.
That is why the Bible never says:
“Try harder.”
It says:
“He gives more grace.”
Grace is the NO of the soul.
The vasodilator of the heart.
The spiritual oxygen that lets you breathe in places your old nature would choke.
Think again of that anonymous professional athlete playing on Denver’s high court.
The altitude drained him.
His legs were heavy.
His breath was short.
His strength was gone.
His first half was miserable — the kind of performance that makes even the greats look ordinary.
Why?
Not because he lacked talent.
Not because he lacked skill.
Not because he lacked discipline.
He simply lacked oxygen.
When he realized he had forgotten the nitric oxide that kept him able to breathe at altitude, he made the call.
He asked for help.
He admitted his need.
He didn’t pretend.
He didn’t power through.
He didn’t tighten his jaw and say, “I got this.”
He said something every believer eventually must say:
“I can’t breathe up here without help.”
Someone delivered what he needed.
And the second half was transformed.
Denver didn’t change its elevation.
The stadium didn’t change its air.
The mountain didn’t move an inch.
But something within him began to flow.
And that changed everything.
This is precisely how grace works for the Christian.
Grace does not lower the mountain.
Grace strengthens the climber.
Grace does not change the altitude.
Grace equips the lungs.
Grace does not remove the challenge.
Grace provides supernatural respiration.
God does not always move the obstacle.
He moves you through it by grace.
When Hebrews says,
> “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts,”
it is not an angry command —
it is an invitation to breathe.
The hardened heart is not the heart that is sinful.
It is the heart that is closed.
The hand goes up.
The resistance forms.
The soul says, “Not yet. Not that. Not me. Not now.”
And the oxygen of heaven can’t flow.
Not because God withholds it —
but because we block it.
We clamp down the very valves where grace is meant to move.
We close the spiritual vessels that grace wants to open.
We constrict the pathways that God is trying to free.
Then we wonder why life feels breathless.
Why joy feels thin.
Why prayer feels suffocating.
Why obedience feels impossible.
Why Scripture feels heavy.
Why faith feels like a workout without oxygen.
You can be spiritually sincere and still spiritually breathless.
You can be devoted and still depleted.
You can be willing and still weak.
You can be saved and still suffocating.
Not because grace is absent —
but because grace has been resisted.
We raised the hand.
We hardened the heart.
We chose constriction over flow, fear over trust, resistance over surrender.
But the cure is not complicated.
Put the hand down.
Open the heart.
Let grace breathe through you again.
Grace is not a reward for good behavior.
It is oxygen for the suffocating.
It is breath for the weary.
It is life for the dying.
You do not earn grace —
you inhale it.
And you inhale it the same way you inhale normal oxygen —
by simply opening the lungs.
Breathing is the most effortless thing your body does.
It is also the most essential.
You can live days without food,
hours without water,
but only seconds without oxygen.
The spiritual life is the same.
Grace is breath.
Without it, nothing lives.
With it, everything changes.
And just as oxygen permeates every cell, every organ, every corner of the body,
so grace saturates every corner of the soul that receives it.
Grace in weakness.
Grace in confession.
Grace in forgiveness.
Grace in calling.
Grace in temptation.
Grace in sorrow.
Grace in transition.
Grace in obedience.
Grace in the places you cannot climb on your own.
Grace is not God shouting encouragement from the valley.
Grace is God hiking beside you,
carrying the pack,
taking the uphill with you,
filling your lungs with His strength.
This is why Paul could say:
> “I labored… yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”
Grace didn’t remove Paul’s calling —
it oxygenated it.
Grace didn’t make life easy —
it made life possible.
Grace didn’t lower the altitude —
it increased Paul’s lungs.
This is why God’s word to Paul was not:
“Try harder.”
It was:
“My grace is sufficient for you.”
Sufficient at sea level.
Sufficient at 14,000 feet.
Sufficient in joy.
Sufficient in anguish.
Sufficient in clarity.
Sufficient in confusion.
Sufficient in every place life takes you.
Hebrews says:
> “Therefore, come boldly to the throne of grace,
to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
Boldly.
Not timidly.
Not apologetically.
Not reluctantly.
Boldly.
Why?
Because the throne is not dispensing punishment.
It is dispensing oxygen.
We are not coming to a judge with a cold courtroom.
We are coming to a King with an open airway.
A fountain of strength.
A reservoir of breath.
The throne of grace is the oxygen mask for the gasping heart.
And when grace flows again, everything changes:
The second half of the game becomes different than the first.
The mountain stops defeating you.
The climb becomes possible.
The voice of God becomes clear.
The resistance falls.
The hand comes down.
The heart opens.
And the soul breathes.
Because the One who is calling you upward
is also giving you the breath to survive the climb.
He gives more grace.
Not just enough grace —
more grace.
Grace upon grace.
Breath upon breath.
Strength upon strength.
Oxygen for every altitude of holiness.
This is the message of Hebrews.
This is the message of the cross.
This is the message of Jesus:
“Come up higher.
And breathe My grace.”
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APPEAL
Tonight, maybe the hand has been up for a long time. Not in rebellion, not in hatred, not in defiance—just in quiet resistance. The place where God has been speaking… and you’ve been hesitating. The place where the heart tightens. The place where grace can’t flow because the soul is afraid to open.
But the same Jesus who spoke in Psalm 95…
the same Jesus who offered Eden’s rest…
the same Jesus who breathed on the disciples…
the same Jesus who carried you through the first half of your life—
is here right now.
And He’s not angry.
He’s not disappointed.
He’s not scolding you.
He’s inviting you to breathe again.
“Today—if you hear My voice—don’t harden your heart.”
Today.
Not someday.
Not when things settle down.
Not after the situation is perfect.
Not once the wounds are gone.
Not once you feel stronger.
Today.
Right here, right now, in the thin air where you feel breathless—
He is offering you the oxygen of heaven.
Would you let grace flow again?
Would you take the hand down?
Would you open the heart?
Would you let the Spirit breathe where you’ve been suffocating?
Some of us have been living the Christian life at Denver altitude with sea-level lungs.
And the Lord is saying:
> “Let Me oxygenate the places that are failing.
Let Me give you the grace you forgot to bring.
Let Me make the second half different from the first.”
If that’s your desire—
if you want to breathe again,
respond to His whisper right where you are:
“Lord, I am opening the places I’ve kept closed.
I am lowering my hand.
I am letting Your grace flow again.
Give me breath for the climb.”
Tonight, heaven leans near
because one opened heart changes the altitude of an entire life.
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PRAYER
Father… thank You for speaking, even when we have resisted. Thank You for whispering, even when the hand was up. Thank You for grace that does not wait for perfection, but rushes into weakness. Tonight, breathe into Your people. Where there is fear—breathe courage. Where there is guilt—breathe forgiveness. Where there is confusion—breathe wisdom. Where there is stubbornness—breathe surrender. Where the air is thin—breathe strength.
Lord Jesus, open the vessels of our souls. Dilate what has been constricted. Let the oxygen of heaven fill every chamber of our lives. Teach us to breathe grace, moment by moment, breath by breath. And when You call us upward, let us climb with Your strength, not our own.
Tonight we take down the hand.
We open the heart.
We yield to Your voice.
And we trust You to carry us to the places where Your grace alone can sustain us.
In the name of Jesus—our Breath, our Rest, and our Grace—Amen.
