Mary Cassian says most speech therapy programs try to teach students how to speak.

But God's program is different. He doesn't expect us to produce anything at all. All he asks is that we attend to him, that we listen and we receive from him.

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Walgamuth, author of True Woman

101, Divine Design.

For April 16th, 2020, I'm Dana Gresh. You know, there are a lot of new phrases in our vocabulary as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Expressions like social distancing, flatten the curve, and even shelter at home.

They've taken on new significance. Words are powerful ways to convey meaning, but using our

words in truly God-honoring ways requires wisdom. Nancy, if you want to learn how to speak wise words,

first you need to learn how to listen. My friend Mary Cassian will explain this idea as she continues in a guest teaching

series called The Power of Transformed Speech. This has been such a helpful and challenging

series to me personally, and I know you'll get a lot out of it as Mary continues the rest of the

week. She's written about how to listen, speak, and glorify God through our words

in a helpful workbook called Conversation Peace. That's P-E-A-C-E. And if you'd like to have that

resource, it's available in our online store at revive our hearts.com. Now, here's Mary.

My youngest son Jonathan lost his hearing when he was about two years old,

and when his loss was diagnosed, the specialists agreed that he would need to use sign language

as well as spoken language in order to communicate. They told me that there was little hope

of him ever speaking clearly without significant speech impediment.

But I was determined that Jonathan was going to speak as well as he possibly could.

So we spent hours and hours each day on the kitchen floor with alphabet cards and homemade games,

and we sat in front of the big mirror in the

hallway struggling to make sounds that were formed so easily by people who could hear. It was a lot of

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