Whose Voice Do You Follow?

Have you ever stopped to think about how many competing voices there are in the world today? Have you ever stopped to think about how many of those voices make their way into your ears, your mind, and even your heart?

There is the voice of media telling us what we "need," what we "deserve," what we should "think," how we should think, what our values should be. We hear the voice of worldly desires; recognition, fame, possessions, money, power, prestige. This voice puffs us up only to deflate us at any opportune moment. We hear the voice of our past, our failures, our mistakes. This voice woos us to just give up and go with the flow. This voice reminds us of our life prior to surrendering to God. This voice is one of condemnation and religion, void of grace and love. On the other extreme, there is the voice of selfish pride. "I can do it all. I can be it all. I can be who everyone needs me to be. I can make it work!"

Jesus gave us a very simple guideline to follow with regard to the competing voices in this world. He knew there would be many, many voices which would need to be filtered out of our lives.

But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.
And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.
And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.

How interesting that Jesus said that his sheep (believers in Him) would not even recognize a stranger's voice, but would ONLY recognize the shepherd's (Jesus') voice! This seems to be the opposite of what is happening in our society today. We are straining and struggling to hear from the Shepherd! There seems to be little problem hearing all the other voices, even in the Church!

We must strive to hear the voice of our Shepherd. We must not only hear it through His written and revealed word, but we must hear it in our Spirit. We must hear His Word for our lives now. Each day, we can hear the voice of Jesus, I am fully convinced. I certainly can't say that I always do. I wish and hope for that, and I know it takes being still before the Lord and meditating on Him day and night, abiding in Him above every other clamor all around. We want to hear His voice, my friends. We want to commune with our Father in sweet fellowship with Him. May we pray that every other voice would be silenced in our lives but His Voice and His Truth alone would prevail and sing forth.