Today, I tried to retune my hearing aid, 'cos it's been giving me trouble - all the conversations have a disturbing metallic tinge, and sounds tinny and compressed.

So I told the technicians about this. They checked, double-checked, and even re-did the audiogram again - twice. But still what I heard through my hearing aid was terrible - either it was too soft or too tinny or too ... you get the idea. After multiple rounds of adjusting, downloading new settings from the computer, and a flurry of questioning and testing, one of the technicians told me, "You need to adjust to it - I can't amplify it any further, else it'd damage your hearing."

So I started getting resigned to the fact that I'd have to adapt to a world of much softer sounds... clearer, yet softer.

Then I said to them, "Sigh. I know... but you know, this hearing aid really sounds so much softer than the previous one I wore."

The other technician suddenly looked a bit surprised. She said, "Hmm... maybe... this hearing aid needs to be sent for repair."

Repair?

Oh... I see. :)

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I'm sharing this experience, because while walking back home, it struck me that this experience can be a model of how to help someone hear God better.

Sometimes when a younger Christian complains that he/she has a hard time hearing from God, seems stuck in a rut, struggle in being close to people, etc... even though he/she has been faithfully reading the Bible, praying, etc... we bombard the younger Christian with a lot of questions, doing "spiritual trouble-shooting"... and then we finally tell the person, "Hmm, have faith in God... you just need to adjust your attitude/expectations/etc."

But you know, sometimes there may be a genuine problem that we never noticed. Maybe it's genuinely not a attitude-adjustment problem on the part of the younger Christian. Maybe it's a simple physical problem, a false teaching that the younger Christian had heard before, or even a lie planted by the devil himself. Maybe it's been too many movies teaching subtly wrong values that the person's been innocently watching, or parental expectations in the past.

Maybe we should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry with the younger Christian... to learn to understand where the younger one is really coming from.

So just some reflections on discipleship... helping people hear God better. Very interesting! =)