Then He went on to say an interesting thing - I don't want to develop it today, I want to look at something else. He said: if you save your life, in other words, if you look after yourself, you'll lose it. He said: if you try and preserve your selfish interest, you'll end up immersed in problems beyond what you can imagine; but He said: if you will lose your life for My sake, you'll find it. What He's saying is something like this: If you engage with Jesus, with Him and His work, you will discover the true identity, and call of God, on your life. If you focus on using God just to get your needs and whatever met, He said you'll end up inward-looking, and non productive. You'll actually lose your life.
So I don't want to go into that. I want you to look with me in John 10:27. We're still looking on the theme of following Jesus, and this is going to be quite practical for you, very practical. Verse 27: My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me. Here it is: My sheep hear My voice. They follow Me. Now what could be simpler than that? So here it is, right in a nutshell, what we're talking about today. We're talking about hearing the voice of God. Jesus said: if you belong to Him - here's the first thing - you hear His voice; and two, you respond to what He's saying. So at the end of the meeting today, I'm going to ask you this question: What impression, or what impressed you about today's message? In other words - or in today's service - what impressions did you have, that impacted you? In other words, I'm going to ask you to start to reflect, what you actually received today; then the second question is: what will you do with that? What steps will you take, or what choices will you make, because the Bible's very clear. If we come into gatherings, and we spend a lot of time listening to messages, and never respond, we end up in a religious, deceived state. The Bible is always very practical, God calls us to act; to listen, and then to respond, so I want to just pick up this thought here today about hearing the voice of God. So tell someone: actually, you need to hear the voice of God.
How can you follow someone, if you don't know where they're going? That's pretty simple isn't it? How can you follow someone, if you don't know where they're going? How can you know where they're going, unless they tell you where they're going? So if you're going to follow Jesus, you need to know where He's going. You've got to be able to listen to Him, so essentially to belong to Christ means very simply this: that we have a capacity to hear Him. Every person here can hear the voice of God. Listen, even if you are not saved, you can hear the voice of God. Adam, after he fell, heard the voice of God. Every person can hear the voice of God; and if you become a believer, then hearing the voice of God becomes absolutely vital, totally vital to your life! So here's the thing: communication is foundational to every relationship, communication. You cannot build a relationship without communication; and it needs to be two-way, absolutely two-way! ...and your wife's nodding furiously. Now that means you have to listen. [Laughs]
Okay, so communication, one of the biggest skills in communication, is the ability to listen; to actually listen, and hear what the person is saying; not jump to conclusions what they might be saying, but actually hear what they're saying; and then make a response. If you don't hear what someone else has got to say, and actually hear it properly, and make a response, that relationship's going to be in deep trouble. That's true of every area of life. How many know that's true of life? Now I want to just picture this up a little bit. Now can you imagine a young couple going out together, usually what you notice is that they talk a lot. Isn't that right? Then you see the same couple years later, and he's got the paper, and he's got his nose in the paper, and she's sort of looking, where to look, and there's no talk going on; so notice that relationships start with a lot of talk, and then when you see them and there's not much talk, you could say that relationship's pretty well in bad shape. Would that be right?