He said: no, this is what I've called you to do. I'm going to make it happen. I said: well You'll have to make it happen, because I'm not putting myself forward; and I watched. It was about three months, from when He spoke to me doing the lawns, and I was ordained and sent in as Pastor of the church, and I didn't do a thing. It just all seemed to happen. It unfolded, and unravelled, and it was because of many other things of course, but here's the point: my life changed the day I heard God speak. If you were to hear God speak to you, it could change your future. It could change your future forever; so I want to just talk to you about hearing the voice of God, so we'll just have a look at a couple of scriptures first of all. Let's have a look in John, Chapter 10, Jesus talking about thieves and robbers and good shepherds. Verse 27, He says: My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me. My sheep hear My voice. Here's the deal: You can hear the voice of God. Now even if you don't know Jesus, even if you're not saved, you can still hear the voice of God. You have the capacity to hear God speak to you.
Adam heard God speaking to him, when he was in the Garden; even though he'd sinned, and walked away from God. People can hear the voice of God. We need to learn what it's like, and how to recognise it. Once you become a believer, Jesus expects, not only would you hear His voice clearly, but you would actually respond and follow Him. So for a believer, the number one thing that I would say, if you have to learn anything in your life, this is the thing you'd want to learn: how can I build a relationship with Jesus, and hear His voice consistently? Think about this: All relationships depend on communication. If there's no communication, then what happens to that relationship? It just begins to diminish, and wither - I see you nodding over there it's right. It's right, isn't it. Relationships wither, if there's no communication. Communication requires that I have a heart to listen, to hear and respond to the other person; so communication's always two-way. What kind of relationship will we be having with God, if all we do is talk to Him, and we never hear from Him? What kind of relationship is that? See, God wants you to have a relationship, and one of the greatest things to cultivate, is your capacity to hear Him speak. So we want to have a look. Notice what He says in John, Chapter 10. We'll read it in another couple of verses. It says in Verse 4, it says: the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice. When we were in Dannevirke, we had a pet sheep. I didn't know anything about sheep, I was from the city, so we decided we'd get a pet lamb. We got the pet lamb, the farmer gave us a pet lamb, we thought it was a cute little lamb, and I found out all the problems with cute little lambs - that grow up. Finally we had this sheep, and here's an interesting thing about the sheep: it recognised my voice.
I would walk home from school - I was just over the road, living over the road, and the sheep would be around the back, and all I would have to do was call out, Sheepy - or Christmas dinner! [Laughs] I'd call out Sheepy, and what would happen is, immediately, it would just roar around the side of the house, and come up to where I was. If I just whistled, that was all it took. It would come around, it would come up, and it would come exactly to where I was. That's the problem, if you've got pet sheep, they just become very, very friendly, but they learn to recognise your voice. They know who you are, they recognise the voice. My mother came to look after the children at one stage. Her voice, they did not know, the sheep did not know; so my mother had no control over the sheep whatsoever, just couldn't get it to do anything. It was just a menace for her, and pooped all over the beans; but however the thing is, that the sheep learn the sound of the voice.
That's what Jesus said. He said My sheep hear My voice. In other words, they recognise the tone, or the frequency, or the sound, of Me speaking to them and they respond. So what I want to do is to open up for you just some very simple things on hearing the voice of God. Here's an interesting scripture. I want you to have a look at this one here, before we go on and give you the practical keys, in Mark, Chapter 4 and Verse 24, he said: take heed what you hear, or how you hear; because the measure you use, it will be measured to you; to those who hear, more will be given. Whoever has, to him, more will be given. So here's what he's saying. He's talking about having an ear to hear. About eight times in the New Testament in the gospels, Jesus says: have an ear to hear. In other words, it's important to learn to listen and recognise God speaking, and respond; and this is what he says. To those who respond to what God's saying, He gives you more, and you have abundance. If we don't respond to what God says, then what we think we have, we lose; or what he's saying in another way round, putting it a different way, he's saying this: your relationship with God will increase and deepen and grow, if you continually respond to what you're hearing Him say; but if we ignore what He's saying, then our ears and heart become dull, we don't hear so much any more; and we think we're doing well as a believer, but we're not really at all.