Grazing in The Wrong Spot

Listen for His Voice

We have 24 hours. That’s it, unless the end of the age happens. For the followers of Jesus, we love a particular phrase: “I haven’t been doing well.” We also love to say, “I know, I need to get back to spending time with God.” We have 24 hours, and the phrases we choose to speak over our lives are these? If the power of life and death is in the tongue, we must be cautious of what we preach to ourselves.

It never ends. The daily rituals of the followers of Jesus, which manifest as disappointment on their faces, have become habits. It’s as if we struggle to graduate from elementary classes on grace and move on to the powerful weapon of God’s language.

I’ve heard it said that one truly understands the gospel once they’ve gone from saying, “Oh no, I’ve messed up, don’t tell Dad,” to “Oh no, I’ve messed up, go get Dad.” Most of us will wake up today feeling less than. We will struggle to get our souls happy in the Lord. We’ve got 24 hours, and it’s likely we’ll spend most of it hoping to be closer to God while simultaneously doing things we don’t invite him into. We are scared to admit to “Dad” that we are struggling. How can we get the tired phrase, “I know, I need to get back to spending time with God,” out of our mouths? Will this ever change? Will we just hope it gets easier? Will we wait passively for the supposed fire in our bones to ignite? Go get Dad. He can help. He’s not condemning you.

He walks through the gate, speaks a gentle word of direction, and invites all to follow. The grazing sheep look his way. He leads them on. The sons and daughters of Jesus know His language. The sheep recognize the timbre of his voice. To know the precious words of our dear shepherd is to know life to the fullest. Oh, how we’ve exchanged the blessed conversation with our shepherd for spiritual disciplines that our hearts aren’t even into. We have lost the love of the shepherd’s speech because we assumed He wanted us to go off and study ourselves to death. He is present. He wants us to begin with hearing his voice, not speaking self-destruction over our lives with, “I know, I need to get back to spending time with God.” Just hear him and graze where he is working. His pace is unhurried. He would rather you follow His voice than go do for Him in an area He isn’t tending the sheep.

I was playing pickleball the other day, and a man I had met a month ago was at the courts. He walked up to me and said, “Josh, I want to ask you a question. You had asked me over a month ago when we had first met, how do I hear the voice of God? Well, I would love to know how you hear Him?” He had told me this question had been in his mind all month and he was hoping to ask it back. I told him about how I hear the voice of God through creation. I explained to him how I can distinguish between my voice inside of me and the voice of the Holy Spirit. I told Him I hear His voice through the word of God, the Spirit of God in others, in visions, sometimes dreams, and often through object lessons. The things I hear are always from the word of God, though. It may be a synonym phrase of a passage, but it always checks up with scripture. The Holy Spirit always brings to remembrance the things Jesus taught.

For many years, I would evaluate my relationship to Jesus based on how well I was disciplined in my spiritual habits. I would gauge my success by how many mornings I woke up early, how often I read the Bible, and whether I myself conquered sin. Christ never made that checklist. They aren’t in the Ten Commandments. You can sleep in and love Jesus with all your heart. You can enjoy His presence without the written word in front of you. And you can walk in freedom from sin without lifting a finger in battle by believing the finished work of the cross. All this comes from a sheep who loves the shepherd’s voice. There have been many times when one passage of God’s word simmered in my soul for weeks. This type of meditating on God’s word is so much more powerful than checking off the yearly Bible plan. His voice directs me. His voice heals me. His voice leads me in paths of righteousness, for His name’s sake.

One word from the mouth of God can change the course of an entire generation. If we were listeners of His language, we would have delight in our disciplines. Make hearing the voice of God your discipline. Sit long enough to hear the trees displaying the knowledge of God. Watch the dolphins in the Choctawhatchee Bay speak of His beauty. Hear the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit in your soul, bringing your thoughts to things that are lovely and pure and praiseworthy. Give Him credit when this happens. Wake up and record your dreams somewhere in case the Lord wants to teach you to take things seriously even though they seem mystical. Allow yourself to be caught up in a vision and have a dialogue with the Lord to see whether that was of Him. Hear the words of your spouse and know that God often speaks through the person you are one with in order to shape and mold your character. Open the word of God and let the divinely inspired and God-breathed scriptures testify of God’s character and personality. Look out for the object lessons around you, even if they are small. As you walk with Jesus, He will point out many things and possibly use parables to help you understand the lesson He is trying to teach you. He did this often when he was on Earth, so why wouldn’t he continue to teach us this way?

The sheep who hear Him won’t have to strive to earn His love. They will know the path of life for the day. They will know the fullness of joy just from His speech. And they will enjoy every treasure He lays out before them because they graze wherever He is. He is their treasure. Fall in love with His voice. If you make this the discipline, you will go from, “I know, I need to get back to spending time with God,” to “I know His voice and He knows mine.” You don’t want to be grazing in the wrong spot. Listen for His voice and then lay down in green pastures.