I’ve been having trouble with my hearing aids lately. In short, they don’t seem to be amplifying sound. After much trial and error, fiddling with the settings, even taking them to a technician, I finally discovered the problem. The hearing aids are deaf!

While they transmit sound beautifully when it comes from my phone during a call or on a video clip, they don’t transmit sound that comes through the air. Why not? The microphones, the part of the hearing aids that pick up sound, don’t work. In short,

The hearing aids can’t amplify what they don’t hear!

After switching to a previous pair and sending the newer ones in for service, I was sharing this story with my son Matt. He said, “There’s a blog in that. You can’t transmit to others what not inside you.” And he followed up with a sentence from The Big Book:

Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come, if your own house is in order. But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven’t got. (Page 164, emphasis mine)

It’s a biblical principle:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. (1 John 1.1 – 3, NIV)

Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. (James 1.21, 22, NIV)