The Voice of the Shepherd

Hearing from God

I wanted to speak to you today about hearing from God. If you have walked with the Lord for any length of time, I’m sure the desire to hear from God directly has weighed upon your heart. The truth is, we can and do hear from him, but sometimes we may not recognize it.

Jesus said in John 10:27

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”   

While I believe anyone, no matter where they are spiritually who reaches out to God, can hear from Him, if you already have an established relationship with Jesus as Lord of your life, then you are one of his sheep.

But clearly, just a sheep can run off any which way if they are not paying attention or they’re not following their master, so also can we.

So there’s a time to be attentive and focused. If I’m trying to watch a particular program on TV, and there’s music playing in another room that’s distracting, it’s going to be harder to follow what I’m watching. Likewise, if other things are going on around us, or our cares are predominating, we may get distracted from hearing what God wants us to hear.

Emotions can also overwhelm us. I deal with this in my earlier blog entitled “Hearing from God Against the Roar of Emotions”.

Proverbs 8:34 says, “Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.”

In this way, we need to ““Enter by the narrow gate” per Matthew 7:13.

To do so, takes surrender - to say, as Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane, “not my will be done Lord, but yours”. 

You may commonly pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven“, but do we really want the Lord’s will be done instead of our own? This means a surrender that we must be willing to make, because if we’re actually not willing to do God‘s will, can we really expect to hear God‘s voice and know His will for our situation? This isn’t an accusation - it is simply a calling into account for me and for you.

Then, when we are doing this, as it says in Isaiah 30:21,

“Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” Whenever you turn to the right hand Or whenever you turn to the left.”

Why, because we will have done what is said in Habakkuk 2:1

“I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me.”

That is good news.

It takes time to discern God‘s voice from our own, and we are told 1 John 4:1, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” 

This takes knowing the Word of God and spending time in the presence of God.

But, through all this, we are given this assurance in Romans 8:14, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” 

Therefore,

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” (That’s Matthew 7:7)

Let’s pray right now to that end.