Hearing God’s voice

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” John 10:27

What does it take to hear the voice of God? First, you have to acknowledge that there is a God and that He exists. Then you have to realize that He communicates with mankind.

How does God communicate and sound when He speaks to me? The only way to know this is to read God’s Word and learn what His voice sounds like and what He says to us in it. It is a difficult concept that we can recognize His voice when He speaks but with study, it can be done. The fact that the Bible exists proves that God has something to say because He has been speaking through the prophets and His disciples for many hundreds of years.

The “Old Testament” is full of God’s Words spoken by inspiration or directly to those He spoke to in the past. God is still speaking to us today but there is so much noise in the world that it has become difficult for us to hear Him clearly. In the world outside the church, many people don’t seem to care what God says or even believe that He exists in the first place. The problem with this kind of thinking is the time that we are living in. For most people who have never been to church or who just didn’t pay attention when they did, the Bible is a book written by old men long ago with tired history in it and rules that we don’t want to live by anymore.

Did the Israelites listen to God when they were in the wilderness after He freed them from bondage in Egypt? For most of the forty years that they spent in the wilderness all that they did was grumble and complain about their living conditions, the food, the water, etc. God even led them to their Promised Land but when they saw that it was occupied by “giants”, they refused to go in as He told them to do. It was this refusal that caused them to be in the wilderness for forty years.

The voice of God is not terrible nor is it scolding or wrathful, it is loving and caring, like a parent with their child. But when the punishment comes, as it usually does, people want to fuss and complain.

God hears your prayers and in some instances, He answers them. But, He answers them in His time and in a way that is consistent with His will for your life, not because you want a certain thing right now. Sometimes His answer is consistent with what you seek, if your heart belongs to Jesus and you’ve grown in your faith enough that your wants align with God’s, but your answer may not come today or tomorrow.

Sometimes, we would rather listen to “wise counsel” from a friend but if it goes against what God’s Word says it should be discarded. Satan can sound “wise” from time to time because he is a created being and can speak God’s Word as smoothly as anyone but also twist it so that it doesn’t mean what it should. Even your own voice can speak so convincingly that you can talk yourself into things that you shouldn’t, just as Jonah did when he didn’t want to warn Nineveh about God’s judgment.

Studying the Bible from cover to cover is the best way of learning how God speaks and what He desires from us. Why should we study His Word to learn about Him? Because it is the best way to learn about God and His ways. Each time you read His Word, you will glean a new insight into His ways and what He wants for your life. God’s Word is the “living Word” and the Holy Spirit gives each of us wisdom that is meant for us. What I get from it may not be the same thing you get but the Spirit gives us according to our ability and maturity to know Him.

Do not be like this world

Don’t worry about it!

We are His sheep

Why do you think God refers to us as His sheep? Because we are helpless against the world without Him. Sheep need leadership. They have to have someone acting as a shepherd otherwise they will be lost and we are lost spiritually without Jesus.

Sense…

Does this world make sense today? In many ways, it doesn’t. So many unusual things are happening everywhere that it is difficult to make sense of them all. Reason and “common sense” don’t seem to have any sway over people today. Life is hard in some places and more challenging in others. Drought, wars, and pestilence are causing so many deaths in the world and causing many to fear and tremble, worrying about what will happen tomorrow. Anxiety is rampant, and people worry about many things, not knowing what is coming.

I believe the reason for all of this anxiety and worry is that people have not looked to the One Who has told us about this time. God had His prophets write many prophecies about the time that we are living in. Today, people are more concerned with their profiles on social media than they are about their immortal souls. God has laid out in the Bible every piece of the puzzle pertaining to today and tomorrow. It takes faith and prayer to understand much of it, but it can be understood.

I pray for all of those who might read this and wonder what I’m talking about. Seek the answers to your worries in God’s Word. Give your heart to Him and be saved from the wrath that is coming soon. I know that it has been a bit more than 2,000 years since Jesus was crucified but the day is coming when He will call the church home to Himself. Then the whole world will fear what is coming, especially those who have been in church but never gave their lives to Jesus. Don’t wait because we don’t know the day or the hour that He will come.

Follow His example

He will bless you

Love one another…

Life…

Not one of us has a choice in this world. Every person that is alive today did not have anything to do with their birth. Each of us that is born on this Earth has a certain number of days and hours that were appointed to us and we can’t live past that last hour and minute. What can you or I do about our life’s end? Is there anything that we can do? Some of us have been given twenty years to live. Some of us have been given nearly a century to live here. There is no special diet that will extend your life or the quality of it. Yes, many people do claim that diets with fewer calories or fewer carbohydrates, or less meat, or even a diet that excludes meat entirely will give you a more healthy life.

Diets will not give you a life of ease and great health without exercise. The problem in this world, especially in America, is that we are vain. We look at our faces and our bodies and think that if we looked better or were healthy then our lives would be much better off than we are now. In some lives that may be true but a healthy body with less fat on it doesn’t help you when this life is over. We only look at life from our point of view but God looks at us as His children who have an immortal soul. Your actual life doesn’t end when this body dies.

If you have given your heart and life to Jesus Christ and follow Him as your Lord and Savior, your life will go on into eternity! There is another problem with our eternal soul though. Even if you don’t accept Jesus as your Savior, your soul still lives into eternity but you will live that life without God or any hope of seeing Him except at the judgment seat. It is at that point that many people who have been in church and were members of a church and possibly were baptized will find that they never actually gave their heart and their life to Jesus. They just went through the motions.

For born-again believers, the judgment seat of their salvation doesn’t exist. Christians will be judged by what they did while they were alive as Christians. Their works will testify about their quality of salvation. So, you have a choice and you have always had this choice. Do you accept Jesus as your Savior or do you decide that you will wait a while before making that decision? The problem with waiting is that you don’t know how many more hours or minutes or even days you actually have to wait! God knows exactly how much longer each of us has but putting off an eternal decision is really not worth it. “It is appointed to each man once to die and then the judgment“; that is from God’s Word. Will your judgment be of your sins and thoughts or of the works that you actually did for God’s Kingdom?

Day to day

Did you thank God for waking up this morning? I did. Why? Because none of us are “given” tomorrow or even the rest of today. God gives us our time on Earth and He knows the number of those days…we don’t. No one is guaranteed to be alive tomorrow let alone next week or next month. That is one of the reasons that Jesus said that we are supposed to carry our cross each day we follow Him. We crucify our old self on that cross daily and walk beside Him. At least that’s what we are supposed to do if we have been born-again.

There are many people in America and around the world who attend church at least once or twice a month and they know about Jesus and His offer of salvation…yet they haven’t accepted Him as their Savior. The go through the motions and even read the Bible a little but they think they’re saved so why do they need Jesus? After all, they’ve bought into Satan’s lie: “You have plenty of time to do that later, you can wait until next month or even next year.”

So many people have done this until most of the polls show that the number of actual born-again Christians is probably around fifteen to eighteen percent of America rather than the seventy percent who believe in God. Satan knows and believes in God and Jesus too, he just won’t serve them. He knows they exist and that every word in the Bible is true but he won’t give his life to serve God.

John 3:16-17 says it all: 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

I pray that whoever reads this will seek Him to know Him as their Lord and Savior. The world doesn’t have much more time regardless of what you hear on the “news” shows.