Day 117: Mark 7:31–36

They brought to Him a deaf man who also had a speech difficulty, and begged Jesus to lay His hand on him. So He took him away from the crowd privately (vv. 32–33).

Sometimes when Jesus is about to do something really special in our lives, He will rearrange our surroundings. He will take us out of our element, just as He took this deaf man “away from the crowd” to give him a new perspective on God’s glory and power.

This reminds me of a time when our daughter Amanda had begun dating a young man. They were just getting to know one another. It was that exciting stage of dating life when everything about this other person is fresh and new and interesting.

They were walking through a shopping mall together, and he turned to her and said, “I want so much to know you, Amanda. And I want you to know me. I want you to know what I love.” He began describing to her how much he enjoyed mountain climbing and camping, just being out in the wild—a whole world away from anything that’s the norm of everyday life. He went on and on about what it meant to him to be out in the middle of nowhere and to sense nature all around him.

“I’d say that’s my element,” he concluded. “What’s yours?” She looked around the mall and motioned to the sights, sounds, and stores that enveloped her. “This is my element.” She was dead serious. When she told me about it later, I had to go to my room, shut the door, and fall on the bed laughing. I thought, “Yep, that’s her element, all right. She got it honest. Her mother raised her in it.”

It’s true. I remember how disappointed I was when I figured out that my spiritual gift wasn’t shopping at the mall, as I had originally thought. After becoming a serious believer and trying to recognize what my gifts were, I discovered that “fashion” wasn’t even on the list of biblical attributes. My theory was blown.

Instead, the Lord was calling me out of my element, growing in me the spiritual gift of love for the body of Christ. But to do that, He needed me in a new set of surroundings, out where He could show me that even if we speak with the tongues of angels, if we don’t have love, we may as well be clanging brass.

Until He has us out of our element—and into His—we will never see His glory. We will always be deaf to what He was trying to say.