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 for January 27, 2015.

If you want to learn how to speak wise words, first you need to learn how to listen.

My friend Mary Cassine is going to explain this idea as she continues in a guest teaching series called Conversation Peace.

This has been such a helpful and challenging series to me personally, and I know that you'll get a lot out of it as Mary continues

all this week. She's written about our listening, speaking, and glorifying God through our words

in a helpful workbook that's called Conversation Peace. We'd like to send you a copy this week

when you make a donation of any amount to revive our hearts.

For details, you can visit us online 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 work.

Jonathan had to learn that though the letter K

didn't have any lip movement, you could feel it

at the back of your throat, k, k, k, k.

...