A Rewired Brain

This morning I was reading from Mark 7:31-35 NIV:

[31] "Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. [32] There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.

[33] After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. [34] He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”). [35] At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly."

As I read this I realized that one thing of significance is not called out in this story, namely the gift of language that was imparted along with the healing of deafness and muteness. In my earlier life and planned career of education, I was very interested in deaf education, because of the struggle to teach language. If someone is completely deaf they do not have the natural understanding of language that we all develop from the time we are babies. Teaching a deaf person to read is very difficult because they really have no idea of verbal communication and the written language is really a representation of the spoken language.

In this story Jesus heals the man of his deafness, his muteness AND at the same time imparts the gift of understanding and being able to speak the language. This would be the equivalent of completely rewiring his brain in an instant. To put it in context, it would be like someone from America instantaneously understanding and being able to speak Mandarin. English and Mandarin have almost no common elements, and if you learn one, you really are not better off in learning the other. To further complicate things, our present understanding of deaf education and the teaching of language, in particular, has made significant strides in the last 200 years. Things like ASL didn't exist that long ago (it originated in the early 1800s), so the deaf man in this story likely had very little understanding of language or communication other than what he had figured out on his own. Going from being deaf and mute to being able to speak is an amazing miracle when we consider the reality of the situation.

At a couple of healing conferences I have attended, one of the things we prayed for was people who were afflicted with dislexia, or other learning disabilities. We asked the Lord to effectively rewire their brains and saw and heard some miraculous results. Several people, at one conference in particular, experienced complete healing, and one young man spent the entire night reading, because he was so overjoyed with being able to read for more than 20 minutes without being totally exhausted. He said it was like the information was just flowing into his brain and he didn't have to work to understand anything. It was an amazing transformation of his ability to learn. This example of healing would be very similar to what is described in these verses from Mark, the rewiring of the brain, and sudden understanding of language.

I felt encouraged to write about this today because I think we sometimes put limits on what God can do, and what He wants to do. We think of the brain as one of the things that we just need to deal with, and learning disabilities are just part of the way some people's brains operate, with no real hope for change. I am here to say that everything is within the ability of God to change. There is nothing in us that He can't touch or change or heal. No disability is beyond His power, no personal characteristic, no personal struggle, nothing is beyond His touch. He can rewire our brains in an instant! He created them in the first place. So, let us not settle for less than He wants to give us. Let us not just accept things the way they are, but let us pursue God for all that He can do, and wants to do.

When Jesus ministered on the earth He healed every sick or afflicted person that came to Him, but he didn't heal all the sick or afflicted in the region. There were those that didn't go to him, and thus weren't healed. Likewise, sometimes we don't go to the Lord for healing because we either think He can't, He doesn't want to, or we can live with whatever it is that afflicts us. Let us be encouraged that He wants to heal us, He can heal us, and His desire is that we are free from that which afflicts us, and is not His best for us.

Lord, I ask that You would astound us with wonders! I am reminded of His promises in Isaiah 29:13-14, 18-19 NIV:

[13] The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught. [14] Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish. ”

[18] In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see. [19] Once more the humble will rejoice in the Lord; the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel."

Amen, come Lord Jesus!