Hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd (and following Him)

The Good Shepherd

Hearing the voice of Jesus

One of the most important, but also most misunderstood aspects of discipleship (being a Christian), is about hearing the voice of God. It should be part of the FAQ of Christianity. A personal relationship with God through Jesus implies that I can hear his voice. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27). What is important to note, is that we are not simply following the example of Jesus; we are actually following the risen Lord, the living King of the Kingdom of Heaven (see What is a disicple? The true Good News).

Elsewhere, I have written something on how Christians hear the voice of God (Quora). This includes,

• Reading the Bible to get to know Him. His word for everyone.
• Reading the Bible and having a sudden insight into how how it is applicable to my current situation - a personal “Word of the Lord” that is not applicable to all Christians or circumstances. - the Holy Spirit applying the Scriptures.
• An deep inner peace about a decision. This implies that I know the peace of God already and there is currently no known sins in my life that can disturb his peace.
• An inner feeling, similar to my conscience, just knowing that something is true and right. I still test it by the Scriptures.
• Specific circumstances that suddenly line up with the above. especially after a time of prayer and fasting. This is not always God speaking to us, and are to be tested (e.g. by asking older and wiser Christians for their advice, and making sure that it is in line with the Bible).
• Prayer, followed by any of the above. If we want to hear his voice, we should ask Him to lead us. Prayer helps to create the expectation that God will speak to me, to bring me to the place where I will listen.
• Have I been following Him in the past? Have I obeyed everything He told me? God will not reveal anything new to me until I have obeyed what He had already said to me.
• An audible voice. This has never happened to me, but has happened to some of my fellow Christians. However, it is not common, even for those people to whom God has spoken audibly.
• God speaking through a dream. This has only happened once or twice in my life to me. Normally this is a dream in which I dream about God or an angel speaking to me; not just a normal dream that I interpret as a message from God. I often cannot forget the dream. And it is obviously in line with what the Bible teaches.
• Sometime a soft inner pulling, showing me somebody in need, something I should do to comfort or help somebody, an insight in a certain situation about what God wants me to do. Feels similar to my conscience, but beforehand.
• Only once in my life has God communicated with me through a vision. It was both to teach me something profound and also to make me experience something of his presence.
• In a smallish community of fellow believers, we often had the experience in our weekly meetings that God would have spoken to a number of us about the exact same subject or from the exact same part of Scripture.
• Answers to prayer: often not in the way I expected, but unmistakenly the hand of God. I can only pray according to the will of God if I know what His will and character is. And I can only pray with true faith (fully trusting that He will hear my prayers) when I know that I am not praying with wrong motives or ask for something that is against the will of God. The way in which God answers my prayers teaches me more about who He is.
• Prophetic insight (word of knowledge?) where I just “instinctively” know something about somebody I have never met in order to help or pray for them according to the will of God. Or an inner discomfort when hearing some teaching (and later finding it to contradict the Bible).

Some of the lessons that I have been learning about hearing the voice of God from the words of Jesus in John 10…

• We become part of his sheep herd only by entering through Him. He is the door for the sheep and only by entering through Him are we saved.
• He calls us by name. He knows each one of us personally.
• We do not follow Him as individuals, but together as a single herd.This was something that I only learned fairly recently. We are not following the Messiah Jesus simply as individuals, but we hear his voice as a group in unity. I have experienced this in the past where as a group we shared what we have learned in the past week – and often God has been talking to us about the same thing. And then the different parts of what we shared, fit together like a puzzle giving the full picture; or like a diamond, with many facets and being seen from different perspectives increases our appreciation of its beauty.
• Getting to know someone takes time. It is through following Him, listening to his voice and going where He calls us, that we get to know his voice.
• It is through getting to know the voice of Jesus Himself that we can easily recognise the voice of a stranger. It is not by learning a bunch of (true) doctrines that we will be able to recognise false teaching, but by knowing Him. Again, this process of getting to know Him is something that happens in fellowship with other followers of Jesus.
• Nobody can pluck us from his hand. If we loose the way, He is the good Shepherd who will come looking for us (Luk.15:4-7).

Christians “hearing the voice of God” is something that many people misunderstand. Although God sometimes speak in an audible voice, this is not common (even in the experience of those who have heard Him in this way). However, it is clear from the way Jesus spoke that his sheep (those who have entered into the Kingdom of God through Him – the Gate of the sheep) should be able to hear and follow his voice. And this was not only true for while He was physically on earth; He explicitly says that He would not leave us as orphans, but would come back to his disciples through the Holy Spirit (John 14). The book of Acts demonstrates how this happened in practice. Paul goes as far as to say that anyone who does not have the Spirit of Messiah, does not belong to Him (Rom.8:9). And he repeatedly says that we are to be led by the Holy Spirit (e.g. Rom.8:1,14, Gal.5:16-18). We can hear the voice of the Shepherd, The real question is if we are (still) following Him.