Have you ever wondered how to listen to God? Not just listen to Him, but also recognize His voice when He speaks. It requires you to first get to know who God is before you can know His voice, right?

Following His Voice

When you spend a lot of time with someone you love, it then becomes a byproduct of that close relationship that you can recognize their voice within a crowd. This makes me think of the verse in John 10:27, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” There is something very intimate about this verse and a few key takeaways to remember.

First, proximity has a way of enhancing your ability to hear and know God’s voice. So, the closer we get to Him, the better we can hear His voice. The second key is that the persistence of time spent with God the better we can recognize His voice when He is speaking.

In John 10:5 it states, “Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

The third key is being able to perceive when a stranger is speaking. We are His sheep, and He knows us, therefore we will follow him. Because we know the Shepherd’s voice, we can better identify who the stranger is who may be trying to speak. The above verse is very clear that the stranger’s voice isn’t one, they will follow. Between the noise of life, our own thoughts, the enemy of our soul, and then God’s voice it can get confusing.

Getting to Know Him

Proximity, persistence, and perception all require you to know the Good Shepherd’s character. Spending time in The Word of God will sharpen your ear to hear Him, but also reveal who He is. We can’t follow someone we don’t know, and we can’t know someone we don’t have a relationship with!

Let this be an encouragement for you today. Get close, lean in, and allow God’s voice to be the loudest one in your life. His voice will never lead you astray. His voice is always going to speak in love. His voice is going to release identity over you. His voice is going to declare the truth. Happy listening!

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