27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. – John 10:27 (NIV)
Our family spent Friday night at the Pinnacle Bank Arena enjoying an evening of WWE Friday Night Smackdown and having an amazing time with 7,000 of our closest friends. The place was rocking with excitement and boy was it loud! I lost count of how many times our family had to repeat ourselves just so we could understand what each other was saying. Between the entrance music of the superstars, the roar of the crowd, and the crazy awesome pyrotechnics, we were either saying, “What?!” or purely guessing what was being told to us.
How much does this sound like our everyday lives when it comes to hearing from God? You might not be in an arena with screaming fans, but the noise in your life is doing a great job of drowning out the voice of God. The radio, television, and social media are constantly speaking into your life and interrupting all your waking moments. The chaos of your busy schedule or the demands at your job thunder so loud in your life that you can’t hear yourself think, let alone hear what Jesus has to say. For some of us, our noisy environments might be so deafening that we aren’t asking God to repeat Himself because we didn’t hear Him speak in the first place.
What about our hearing being limited because of our spiritual health? Notice that Jesus says His sheep follow Him. Have you ever stopped to think that it’s hard to hear the voice of our Shepherd if we aren’t anywhere near Him? Our proximity to Jesus has huge ramifications on our ability to hear Him speak! Are we spending time in prayer? Remember, prayer is a two-way conversation and that means we must be silent and wait in obedient attention for Him to speak. Are we spending time with our Bible every day? We can’t complain about not hearing from the Lord while our Bible sits on the table somewhere collecting dust. Remember, the Bible is His Word and He speaks through His Word. When we go to the pages of Scripture, we’re meeting Jesus there to hear from Him. Are we following in obedience the last thing we heard Jesus say? Oftentimes, we keep listening for something new when we haven’t followed Him into the last thing He spoke to us.
One more thing to point out: notice Jesus says, MY sheep. One thing we know about sheep is that they only listen to the voice of their shepherd. They can hear their shepherd’s voice over all the others and will only respond in obedience to that shepherd’s voice. Are you one of Jesus’ sheep? Is He your Shepherd? Until that happens, you will continue to be bombarded with the voices of the world, longing to hear the voice of the One who can bring joy, peace, healing, forgiveness, and love into your life. If you’re wanting to hear His plans and purposes for your life, then it has to start with making Him Lord and Savior. There’s no better decision you could make! It’s then that you’ll begin to discern His voice over all of the others. And as the days go on, you’ll fall more and more in love with Him resulting in being close by His side. If you want to know more about Jesus or what it means to make Him Lord of your life, visit this page on our website. Be sure to connect with us if you make that decision – we want to celebrate with you!
Every follower of Jesus has the opportunity to hear from Him. One of the goals of this 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting is to lower the volume of the world around us so that we can hear more clearly what our King Jesus has to say. During this 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting, could it be that God wants to do a new thing with our hearing? What difference could that make? We know He is speaking. Are we listening?
What other noises do you need to silence in your life in order to hear Jesus?
What spiritual check-up might you need to take to see if there’s anything that may be preventing you from hearing the voice of God?