I have uh, three siblings. I have an older sister.
Her name is Crystal and then I have two younger brothers, Anthony and Jonathan. I’m, I’m, I’m second in line.
I’m sort of right in the middle. And, um, we’re all very, very good friends.
My, my sister, my older sister, Crystal and I are, are extremely good friends.
We actually were next door neighbors for a large portion of our life. Five or six years.
We live right next door. She has five Children, but her three boys, she has two older daughters.
Her three boys are pretty much the exact same age as my three boys.
It’s like we planned it or something.
We just kept having these boys and we lived next door to each other, home schooled our Children really together.
So she did all the hard stuff. I did recess and lunch.
That’s what they came to my house for and it’s just a zoo basically all day long, six boys just running back and forth.
So we have spent a lot of our adult years really being very close friends.
Um, but of course, in our younger years, we were, we growing up together So we butted heads quite a bit.
Crystal and I probably had a rivalry that started very, very, very early in our lives because my sister, Crystal was the very first child, obviously in my family, but the first grandchild for either side of the family.
So paternal grandparents, maternal grandparents, she was the first grandchild.
Her name was Crystal because she was the light of everyone’s eyes.
So my grandparents were so thrilled that they finally had this grand baby.
And of course, I know there’s something about that first grand baby.
Um, that you just are so thrilled and excited about.
I’ve heard that from lots of grandparents and my grandmother in particular on my father’s side, she was so excited about this first grand baby girl.
So for Christmas, every year from the moment Crystal was born, she would send this box of stuff for her for Christmas inside of this box, there would be things that little girls used to wear, not this, you know, sort of casual skinny jeans stuff.
Uh, uh I’m talking about the hoop skirts, you know, with the ruffles on the bottom.
Do you remember when little girls used to wear those little fold over socks that had the lace around the trim?
Yeah, those big hoop skirts and stuff where in church on a Sunday they’d be spinning around because they’d want to see how high their skirt could get.
She’d send little patent leather shoes, little white and black patent leather shoes and just lots of sweet things she would send them, the box would come with Crystal’s name on it.
And I know what my grandmother was thinking. She was thinking that she was gonna send things in crystal size.
And then all of us could just grow into all of the hand me downs and all of the, the stuff that she would soon grow out of.
And I remember being so excited every year when the box came, the box would come with Crystal’s name on it.
We would stand together and we would open up this box and I would be so excited as we took out every little skirt and every little pair of socks and every little pair of shoes.
Because I remember thinking that soon sister girl, you’re gonna grow out of all this stuff and it will all be mine.
But I remember there was one particular year.
I don’t know, it must have just been because I was a little bit older that year, maybe nine or 10 years old that I’m opening up this box with my sister.
And I remember that year not being excited about this situation anymore. I remember opening up the box.
I remember pulling out the stuff and I remember feeling a little bit disconcerted about the fact that this stuff had not been specifically chosen for me.
This stuff had been chosen for her and I’ve been ok with hand me downs with second hand clothes all of these years.
But all of a sudden I wanted my own stuff.
I wanted something to come with my name on it that had specifically been chosen for me.
There ought to come a time in your relationship with the Lord where hand me down revelation just doesn’t do it for you anymore.
There ought to come a little bit of disconcerting a little bit of maturity in your walk with God where you become a little bit unsettled to only be spoon fed the word of God from someone else to you.
Now, we thank God for our pastors and our teachers and our leaders that help us to rightly divide the word of truth.
But there ought to come a time in your life where you’ve decided, you know what I want fresh revelation with my name on it that has come straight from God’s spirit for my life because, you know, we can be handicapped as Christians.
We can live our whole lives leaning on revelation that, that is spoon fed to us from other people instead of knowing that the exact same holy Spirit of God that lives in that person whose faith we might rightfully admire that.
The same holy Spirit of God that lives in them also lives in you to teach you all things.
And on the, the end of this conference, what we want for you is so much of what Ali said a few moments ago.
When she stood on this platform that really, this is not the end, this is the beginning that when you leave this place, it not, it ought not be a period.
On the end of a sentence, it really ought to be just the opening up of a brand new fervent, vibrant relationship with Jesus.
That what you’ve had in this room, you cannot wait to get home and to just um just coddle a little bit and encourage a little bit and be in the word of God and in prayer and in worship, not because there’s a crowd gathered, but because the same God who is permeating this room is the same God who will be with you in your home, in your room, on your job in your life, in your marriage, in the details of your daily circumstances, you can hear the voice of God.
I’m so glad that you have come to this conference.
But if the only time that you expect to hear God speak to you is once a year at the conference, you gonna be in trouble.
If you’re waiting on breath of God next year to actually experience the breath of God, the oxygen of God to your life, you’re gonna be in trouble.
Listen, I hope you go to church on Sunday. I hope you go.
If you do not go to this church that you go to a vibrant spirit filled bible teaching church somewhere, you need to be planted in the house of God.
So I pray that you recognize that this conference did not take the place of Sunday morning tomorrow at your church.
Come on, somebody ought to say amen to that your pastor ought to be so thrilled that you came to this conference because you bring tomorrow morning into the House of God, a fire and a fervency to serve the people of God and to be in the setting of the presence of God.
So I pray you go to church on Sunday.
But if the only time you are hearing the word of God is once a week on a Sunday, you’re gonna be in trouble.
I pray that you’re in Bible study.
I know many of you are that once a week or twice a month, you may meet up with a group of girls over a Bible study so that you can go deeper into the word of God.
I pray that you do that.
But if the only time you are ever hearing God is when you are gathered with other people, you are handicapped in your relationship with God.
We ought to, we ought to desire you ought to hunger even if you’re not quite sure how yet you ought to hunger for it, to just be you and God over his love letter, asking him to speak to you and to give fresh wind and fresh fire for the details of your life.
You can hear the voice of God.
There is a portion of scripture that speaks to this more clearly than any other.
I think it’s been encouraging to me in my own life because I have a tendency to, to uh sometimes become a little bit handicapped in this way that I enjoy so much.
Listening to other people teach and listening to the revelation that is the Holy Spirit has given them to share with us to edify me.
II I become, I can become a little bit handicapped and that I have to be encouraged myself to remember that I too can have my own personal relationship with Jesus where my spiritual ears are open to hear what it is that he wants to say to me from my life as a woman for my peace of mind, peace of heart from my life as a mother to the three sons that the Lord has given me to the husband that the Lord has given me to be married to for nearly 20 years.
Now that he’s got a word that has a sign just for me.
I’ve got to remind myself that I have the privilege to hear the voice of God as well.
And this portion of scripture has helped me with that.
It is in the book of John John chapter 10, I’m gonna read to you verse one through five and then I’m gonna hop over to verse 27 and we’re just gonna camp out there for just a few minutes on this final evening of this incredible conference that we’ve shared together.
John chapter 10 verse one through five says this truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way.
He is a thief and a robber, but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
To him, the doorkeeper will open the door, the sheep will hear his voice.
He calls his own sheep by their name and then he leads them out.
Freedom is in the voice of God.
When he puts forth all of his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
Verse five says, and a stranger, they simply will not follow, they will flee from him because they do not know the voice of a stranger.
Verse 27 my sheep hear my voice.
I know them and they follow me, listen to that one liner again.
There’s a whole lot packed into that one liner.
If you underline in your brick and mortar bible like I do, this is one of those verses that deserves to be underlined.
John 10 27 says my sheep. This is what they do. They hear my voice.
He says, I know my sheep and they follow me a lot of times the details of what Jesus wanted to get across the truths that he wanted to communicate to us.
Sometimes they are lost amidst the shuffle of some terminology and some, some uh cultural nuances that we miss because we don’t know the details of stuff like wheat and soil and grapes and those sorts of things oftentimes he will speak about things.
And unless we understand some cultural significance, we’ll miss out on the richness of what there is.
So let’s just go back in time just to little bit to the Middle Eastern sheep fold in jesus’ day so that we can wrap some flesh around this and see how we as daughters of God can expect to hear the voice of God.
There are four details in this one line where we’re gonna settle in for just a few moments tonight.
There are four details that are gonna help us to understand how we can make sure we leave this conference fully anticipating that we can keep this love affair going all year long until we meet again, same time, same place next year.
He says my sheep are the ones who hear my voice.
The very first thing Jesus points out in this one liner, John 10 27 is that my sheep are the ones who hear my voice.
He points out a relationship in the Middle Eastern sheep fold. In jesus’ day.
A shepherd would have upwards of 100 sheep that might be in the flock that he’d be leading all day long throughout the day.
As the day wore on and everyone became tired and it was time for the sheep to sleep.
That one shepherd would take his all of his 100 sheep to a fold for the night.
In fact, there might be upwards of 10 shepherds that would bring their 100 sheep to one fold to stay for the night shepherd.
Number one and number two and number three and number four, all the way up to number 10, they would all come to the same fold.
The fold was uh boarded off or fenced off by, by uh stones that had been gathered up into face high fence lining all the way around.
And there would be one entrance, one opening, there was no gate, there, there was no door, there, just an opening into the stone lined fold.
And so all 10 of the shepherd would bring their 100 sheep.
There might be upwards of 1000 sheep in the sheep fold to spend the night.
Nine of the 10 shepherds would turn around and go back into the nearest city to sleep for the evening.
There would be one shepherd that would stay behind.
He would lay his body in the opening of the sheep fold and he would become the doorway to the sheep fold.
He would actually use his body as the barrier.
He would make sure to watch over the 1000 sheep that were inside the fold that night and used his own body as the gate, as the doorway to the sheep to make sure that there was no predator or no stranger that tried to take advantage of the 1000 sheep that were on the inside in the morning.
When a shepherd would return from the city to retrieve his flock. The porter, that’s the shepherd.
The name of the shepherd that had stayed behind was called the porter.
The porter would lift his body up from where he was laying all night long.
He would see a shepherd coming from afar and he would take time to evaluate whether he recognized the shepherd.
He would want to determine whether or not this shepherd was a true shepherd of one of the flocks that was inside.
If he recognized that it was a true shepherd, he would remove his body from the opening of the sheep fold.
The shepherd would walk into the sheepfold that had 10 different flocks and that shepherd would call his sheep with one call.
The 100 that were in relationship with that shepherd would detect the call of their shepherd and only those 100 would rise up out of the flocks that were gathered that night and follow their shepherd out.
What mattered as to whether or not they understood that call was not whether they were black sheep or white sheep.
It didn’t matter whether or not they congregated with a whole lot of sheep or a little bit of sheep.
It didn’t matter whether they were the cool sheep or the cheaply discarded runs.
The only thing that mattered was whether or not they were in relationship with the shepherd.
I’ve got a question for you today. Are you in relationship with Jesus Christ?
Have you placed faith in Jesus Christ?
Because the only way that you’ll be able, that I’ll be able after this day is over to clearly hear the voice of God when we’re not necessarily in the company of many others.
The only way to have an ongoing fervent, fiery relationship with Jesus Christ is to make sure that you actually have a relationship with him.
And here’s what you need to know.
Our God doesn’t have grandkids just because your mama placed faith in Jesus Christ does not mean that, that trickle down into your life.
You gotta make your own decision to have a relationship with Jesus.
And it doesn’t matter whether or not you congregate with a lot of sheep or a little sheep, whether or not you’ve done a whole lot of good deeds over the course of your life, whether or not you’ve been singing in the choir or on the praise team or taking meals to a friend, doing good things, bravo to all of those things.
The question still remains. Have you decided to place faith in Jesus Christ as the only way, the truth and the life?
I know it’s not politically correct to say it, but I’m gonna tell you that there still is only one way to have a relationship with God.
And that is through Jesus Christ.
Many people often ask, how could a God who is supposedly so good?
Only give 7 billion plus people on the planet from different cultures and different continents and different languages and different backgrounds.
How could a God who is supposedly so good?
Only give all of those diverse people one way to have a relationship with Him if he’s so kind and so good, how could there only be one way while that’s a good question?
It’s not the right question. The question is not. How could a God who is so good?
Give us one way. The question is, how could a God who is so holy?
Give us such unholy beings any way to have a relationship with Him?
When you place faith in Jesus Christ, you have an opportunity to have an ongoing conversational relationship with Jesus, with him, with God, for Him to speak to you, for your spiritual ears to be heightened and quickened so that you have the opportunity to hear the voice of God.
You become a part of the family, you have relationship.
I remember when I’d be sitting in church, I was, I was kind of born and raised in the church.
I go to the church that my father started when I was one year old.
He and my parents, he and my mother still pastor of the exact same church um that they started when I was one.
So I know nothing other than being in a great healthy church.
Um where my own dad preaches the word of God.
And I’ve been sitting on the first or second row of church.
As long as I can remember, I still sit right there behind my parents with my, in all my siblings and all of our kids, we all sit together in church.
Um and we are taught the word of God.
And I remember when I was young, I used to be in the children’s choir and I would be up there in the children’s choir stand and I’d be sitting there.
And after we sang our one song for that particular service, I remember, you know, we get a little fidgety because we were kids and now there was this long sermon and they had announcements and all the other stuff that went along with church and you’re sitting there and you’re still sitting on the choir uh in the choir loft at the time.
That’s what we had, you know, these risers with chairs and you kind of sit through the whole service.
We’d get fidgety, we’d start chewing a little gum, we’d start writing notes and passing it to each other.
We start chuckling and nudging each other and acting up sitting right there up on the choir loft.
And I remember looking down to that first or second row where my mother was sitting and she might not see me for a while.
But after a few minutes I look down and catch her eye and she give me that mama stare.
Anybody know what I’m talking about.
When I say the mama said, she didn’t have to actually come up on the platform and say anything to me with that one stare a whole, a whole um conversation unraveled in my mind.
The consequence unraveled in my mind. I got straightened up because I knew the expression of my mother. Why?
Because we’re part of the same family. In fact, there has been a time in your life.
I know where you and your girlfriend had this funny experience that happened to you and maybe you’re trying to communicate the experience to somebody else who wants to know what’s so funny.
What are you laughing at? And you’re trying to, to get them in on the joke for them to actually understand what is so hysterical about this.
And the more you talk, the more perplexed that person looks because they don’t, they don’t understand what’s so funny about what you’re talking about, no matter how much you try to communicate it, they just don’t get it because they’re not a part of that connection.
When you place faith in Jesus, you become a part of the family of God.
You have access to certain expressions, you have access to certain insight that you would not normally have access to listen to Ephesians chapter two verse 19.
In the amplified Bible, I love it so much.
It says therefore, you are no longer outsiders, exiles, migrants, aliens excluded from the rights of citizens.
But you now share citizenship with the Saints God’s own people consecrated and set apart for himself.
You belonged to God’s own household. You are part of the family of God isn’t that great.
The first chapter of the book of Romans is, is compelling for many reasons.
But one of them is that it says that general revelation is available for all of humanity.
In other words, the psalmist says, the fool says in his heart, there is no God because if you just look up to the heavens, if you look around at the mountains, if you see the oceans and try to figure out how in the world, all of that water stays separate from the land.
If you don’t recognize the hand of God, staying the oceans from the land.
If you look at the mountains and don’t realize, looking at the stars and the suns and the moons and the Galaxies that there has got to be a God somewhere.
The palma says, you’re a fool because general revelation tells us there is a God.
I’m grateful for general revelation. I’m grateful for the things I learned about God.
Just by looking at him. We learned about the creativity of God, the character of God, just by looking at what he has created that’s general revelation.
And if you’re like me, you appreciate general general revelation.
But if you’re also like me, then I know you don’t just want general revelation.
You want some specifics, you want some details, you wanna know whether God’s will for you is that you would take this job or whether he’d prefer that you take just this job.
You’d like to know whether or not you should live in this neighborhood or whether or not you should live in this neighborhood.
You’d like to know if that, that function you’re feeling at full time.
Ministry is for you or whether it’s to be a minister on the corporate job that the Lord has settled you in.
You’d like to know single woman whether you should marry this guy or this guy.
Don’t we wish that was the problem whether to marry this guy or this guy, Lisa Harper.
We want clarity.
We want specifics and details for our lives.
First Corinthians 2 14 says that people that are not believers that do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ, they can’t understand the specific truths that are given to God’s spirit.
It’ll all sound like given to God’s spirit for us.
It’ll sound like foolishness to those who do not, do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
And here’s why when I was growing up, my parents were uh pretty strict about several things.
One of them was that we didn’t watch a lot of TV. During the week there.
That wasn’t really for religious reasons. It’s just, we’re busy.
There were four kids, uh, lots of different after school activities.
We were busy homework to do dinner, dishes to get done.
We didn’t have time for television so we really could only watch television on the weekends and we didn’t have cable, we didn’t have satellite.
We didn’t have any of that. It was just regular basic channels.
I remember that after I moved out, getting ready to get married and I got this apartment, I was setting it up for Jerry and I for after we got married, when he would be joining me in that apartment.
One of the very first things I did was call the cable man. I was so excited.
The cable guy came over, I’ll never forget it.
My television was an actual box back then and it was sitting in a, in an, and he moved it out from, from uh in front of the wall and he hooked up all of these cords and cables in the back.
He put it back in place. He came around to the front.
He handed me a remote control and he said, hit the guide button.
I remember hitting the guide button and watching all the options, the menu of options flash across the screen.
I was so amazed at all the and I was angry that my parents had deprived me my entire life of all of those options.
All of those television channels did not magically create the moment that the cable guy showed up, those channels had always been available.
I had just now received the right hook up so that I could gain access to those channels.
Listen, God is speaking. God wants you to hear his voice, but you need the hook up so that you can detect the channels that will allow you to have access to God speaking personally and intimately to you.
And the hook up is the Holy Spirit.
At the moment you get saved, you receive the greatest gift you will ever receive this side of eternity.
And that is the Holy Spirit of God. Listen to me.
The Holy Spirit is not a ghost or a wind or a fire or a dove.
He’s often symbolized by those things in the scripture. But y’all that ain’t who He is.
The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, not third because He is the least in value.
Just third because he is the last to be revealed to us in the pages of scripture.
But all of the power, all of the glory, all of the authority, all of the grandeur of God.
The father is in the person of the Holy Spirit, which means when you place faith in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit takes up residence in you.
That means that all of the power, all of the glory, all of the grandeur, all of the greatness of God.
The Father now lives on the inside of you.
The Holy Spirit is your hook up so that now you can detect the spiritual channels that will allow you to hear the voice of God.
And so then you’ll feel the red light of conviction and that red light will mean stop.
Sometimes you will feel the yellow light of, of dis ease and a lack of peace and that yellow light will mean slow down.
Sometimes you will feel the green light of peace over a circumstance, the green light, the wind of God’s favor pressing you forward.
And that green light means go, the conviction of God’s spirit begins to well up in your heart and in your life.
Because when you’re in relationship with Jesus, the spirit of God begins to govern your, your circumstances and or your, your uh convictions.
And as you yield to Him, as you walk in obedience to him, you will find that his voice grows louder and louder and louder and helping to govern your, your decisions and your choices.
Surrendering to the Holy Spirit, the filling of God’s spirit as he outworks his fruit and his gifts in your life.
The Holy Spirit is your hook up.
Listen, this is why sometimes you sit in that movie, the exact same kind of movie you would have watched before you became a believer in Jesus.
And you sit there seeing the same images you’ve seen hearing the same jokes you’ve always seen listening to the same language you have always seen.
But on this day you’re sitting there with your girlfriends and you’re just a little bit uneasy about what’s up there on that screen and you can’t figure out why in the world you feel so uneasy when this is what you’ve always done.
That’s the Holy Spirit convicting and challenging and tweaking and turning and molding you into the image of Jesus Christ.
It’s called sanctification. Somebody say sanctification, sanctification is the process by which you become molded into the image of Jesus where you begin to think like Jesus and talk like Jesus and walk like Jesus and want to honor Jesus in your actions.
It’s when you’re doing the same things you’ve always done, but there’s something about it now that just doesn’t sit right with.
You don’t fight that. That is the spirit of God speaking to you.
So for many of us, we have felt this little conviction about a relationship that we’re in single woman.
The relationship that you’re in. There’s something about it that just doesn’t feel right to you and you’ve been fighting to hang on to this relationship when the Holy Spirit has been trying to sever it, trying to show you there’s something better for you that there’s something a different direction that he wants to take.
You don’t ignore that prompting on the inside. That’s how the Holy Spirit speaks.
And once you have that connection, the Holy Spirit living on the inside of you.
You should expect to hear the voice of God.
In fact, that’s the second thing that Jesus says in this passage. He says, my sheep, there’s the relationship.
He says, what they do is hear my voice. That’s the result of the relationship.
He says the results of the relationship is that you will hear my voice. It’s what you should expect.
You should anticipate that. What you’ll do as a daughter of God is hear the voice of God.
You should expect that when you have your quiet time, that God is going to speak a fresh word over your life, you should anticipate and know that while every time you sit over the pages of scripture, it won’t seem like it is specifically for you that there will always be something that God is trying to declare about Himself over your life.
Because I want you to know that sometimes you look at people on this platform, maybe like me or like Lisa or like Pastor K or like Lee or Becky.
You might look at someone like your pastor and you must think that every single time we sit over the pages of scripture, it’s just fresh and for event and fiery and we’re hearing God and it’s all amazing every time.
But sometimes y’all, sometimes the quiet time is just about the bu sites and the Hittites and they’re fighting the Amor rights and then those I ate the other its and we don’t know what, anybody know what I’m talking about.
Yeah. Know what this has to do with my personal life.
But because I expect to hear God because I go into it anticipating that there’s something in here for me.
Then at least I always pray and say, but Lord, what does this teach me about your character?
That you want me to know?
What does this at least show me about your personality or what you would say or wouldn’t say?
I wanna know you as much as I possibly can through the scriptures. Even when sometimes it is dry.
I expect to hear the word of God. You should come to church this way.
Anticipating that there is a word for you, not just a general word for everybody, but there’s a specific word for you.
Your heart ought to be heightened, your spiritual ears ought to be open, detecting a word that might come from the platform for you from your pasture for you.
But also when you’re standing in line waiting for the bathroom at the women’s conference, you wanna be eavesdropping on conversations that are happening around you because God can use anyone at any time to speak a word that echoes in the Hollows of your heart.
God speaks and he says, would you please have your spiritual ears open and expect that you child of God have the privilege to hear from your daddy.
Expect to hear the word of God.
A w Tozer great theologian says that only those who expect to hear God actually will because if you don’t expect to hear him, then every time God speaks, you will say it was just a coincidence.
Every time God speaks, you will say, oh, that was my own idea.
Every time God speaks, you will discount it as anything and everything except what it is.
But Deuteronomy 30 God told the people, my word is not so hard that you have to send a prophet into the heavens to get it for you or someone to the other side of the sea to get it for you.
He says my word is in your own heart and it’s in your own mind.
God speaks to regular girls like you and me, mothers and wives and single women and working women and retired women and grandmothers and aunts and high school students and university students.
You don’t have to have a seminary degree to hear the voice of God.
You’re his daughter and that relationship that family makes it so that you should sit on the edge of your seat in anticipation that you can hear the voice of God.
It means that when there are divine intersections that other people call coincidence, you can see the fingerprints of God on that.
It means you look back over your history.
And now in hindsight, you can see the footprints of God that guided you every step along the way.
You because you are a daughter of God, what other people call luck, you call providence because your God is sovereign that you don’t trust in the stars to bring you luck.
Uh-huh You trust in the creator of those stars who is aligning your step and governing your, governing your path.
Expect to hear the voice of God. It is your birthright because you are part of the family.
Jesus says there’s a relationship, my sheep.
He says, there’s a result, they hear my voice and then he says, there is a reason, relationship, a result and a reason.
He says, here’s the reason I know my sheep.
That’s the reason why you should expect to hear him.
He says, because girl, I know you, I called up a friend of mine who, um, this is many years ago now, but I called up a, a guy I knew that worked with sheep and cattle to ask him a few questions about this passage because I don’t know if you can tell by looking at me or not, but I’m not really a sheep and cattle kind of girl.
So I called up someone who is, and I asked him a question about this whole knowing the sheep business.
I wanted to know about this.
He said, well, it’s interesting, Priscilla actually, that is a nuance back in the Middle Eastern sheep fold in the first century in jesus’ day.
That’s a nuance that is very unique and specific to that time period.
The knowing of the shepherd and the sheep.
He said that shepherd would spend hours upon hours upon hours a day, just spending time with his 100 in that flock, they would sleep together, they would eat together, they would play together, they would work together, they would be an intimate relationship with each other so that they’re sent so that they knew the scent of the shepherd so that they knew the voice of the shepherd, the tone of the shepherd.
He said, in fact, they knew each other so intimately that the shepherd could of course, call all 100.
But the shepherd could also change the tone of his call just a little bit and call one out of his 100.
That’s how intimately they knew the shepherd.
He said, Priscilla, with the advances of modern technology, we don’t know the she our sheep anymore.
He said we use helicopters and sheep dogs and we’ve got them fenced in and we brand them or we put an electronic device on them so that we just don’t even have to have a relationship.
He said the other day, I walked into the gate where my sheep were and they scattered because they don’t know me.
I’m not in relationship with them.
I’m like a stranger to them because modern technology has made it to where the sheep and the shepherd don’t have to have intimacy anymore.
I wanna tell you how much I like.
You appreciate the advances in modern technology.
But in the next breath, I wanna tell you how the more advanced it becomes, the more options that are available to us every single time.
I think the enemy sits more on the edge of his seat in applause because there’s yet another thing to distract us from knowing our savior and having intimate me see with him.
Y’all, our Children don’t know what it’s like to just sit in the presence of God and potentially hear the word of God, the Holy spirit beckoning them.
Because all throughout the church service, they’re busy playing another game of candy crush because we haven’t taught them how to just sit still apart from modern technology.
And the reason we haven’t taught them is because we haven’t taught ourselves.
There’s no boundary, there’s no margin, it is overrun our lives.
And with the advances of modern technology, we have walked away from the beautiful stepping one step after the other, the walk of relationship with Jesus Christ.
There’s a man named Henry Blackerby.
She was, this man has such a uh um faithful, long diligent relationship with Jesus where he is a scholar for sure.
But what the nuances of his books and devotionals give you is not just the nuances of study.
It’s a man who now in his eighties, I believe has walked with Jesus.
He happened to be in my church once and I cornered him.
That’s what I do with people who I admire their relationship with Jesus. I just corner him.
I get all up in their business.
And I said, how do you know when God is speaking to you?
How can we hear the voice of God? Y’all? I had a spiral notebook and a pen out.
I was ready for a seminary class. I was waiting for him to give me details.
I had bullet points listed down so that I’d be prepared to write everything down that he was going to say.
That man looked back at me and he said, here’s the secret to hearing God.
The more you know God, the more clearly you can hear Him, the more intimate your relationship with Jesus.
The more quickly you will be able to determine when it’s the voice of a stranger.
You’ll be able to detect when it’s your ego talking and not God, you’ll be able to determine when it’s fear talking and not God.
You’ll be able to tell when it’s the enemy. You do know you have an enemy, y’all.
You know, you have an enemy and the enemy doesn’t come to you dressed in a red jumpsuit and a pitchfork and say, hey, it’s me.
Second Corinthians chapter 11 verse 14 says, he disguises himself like an angel of light.
He wants to look and sound as close to the will of God for your life as he possibly can.
That’s why Spurgeon wrote this. He said that we must not only pray that God will help us to discern between good and evil between right and wrong.
But we gotta pray that God will help us to discern between right and almost right.
And the way to do that is to have intimate relationship with Him.
Because the more you know Him, the more you’ll be able to detect when what you are hearing or sensing is not from God.
The more you know what his love letter says, the more you’ll be able to recognize when there is something that is spoken to you or said to you or bubbling up in your heart.
That is contrary to the word of God, you’ll know that is not my God because he would never speak in contradiction to his own word.
The more you know God, the more clearly you can hear God. My brother’s name is Anthony.
Uh the one that comes right after me. He’s Anthony Junior. Um, Anthony has my father’s name.
They’re both Tony Evans, uh Tony Evans senior and Tony Evans Junior. He’s got my, my dad’s name.
He talks a little bit like my dad. He’s got the same mannerisms as my dad.
He has the same build as my dad. He’s very, very much like my father. They look very similar.
My mother has a picture of my father when he was 18 years old, graduating from high school.
He had a sport coat on and a bowtie.
His head was tilted just like this and he had a little side grin.
And at 18 years old, my brother took a picture with a sport coat on as he was graduating from high school with a bow tie.
He had a little side smile with his head tilted. She put them in a frame next to each other.
They look almost identical. I have seen my brother use this to his advantage.
I’ve been there at times when someone has called the house for my father and he’s picked up the phone, but because he sounded so much like my dad, the person didn’t know they weren’t talking to my father.
So Anthony hung in, hung on the phone for a little while and got all the juicy details before he handed the phone over to my father.
I’ve seen him use it to his advantage.
But I will tell you that there is one person that even though he’s been able to trick a lot of people through the years, there is one person he’s not able to trick and that’s me.
And the reason is because I’ve spent my whole life getting to know the two Anthonys.
So when one of them calls me in the first few seconds of the phone call before they’ve even said much of anything I am able to detect which one of the Anthony I’m talking to.
Why? Because I’ve spent my life getting to know them the more you just get to know Jesus, the more you hang out with him, the more in prayer you talk to him and then ask him to open up your spiritual eyes to see and detect his answers in your life.
As he allows coincidences, as he allows paths to cross, as he allows you to be in settings like this where he is speaking a general word that then becomes specific to you when you feel like you’re the only person sitting in the room.
And the word is illumined and made specific to you, the more you learn his personality and the tone of his voice and the way he treated Moses and Joshua and Esther and Ruth, the way he handled Saul of Tarsus and how Saul became Paul and the disciples and those people that were here in the New Testament, the more you realize how he related to them, you will discern and determine that these people actually aren’t exceptions to the rule.
They’re examples to me of how God wants to also relate to me.
And the more you know Him, the more clearly when the enemy comes into your path, you will be able to determine right away.
Uh uh That’s not my God because I know my God and my God wouldn’t say anything like that.
My sheep, there’s the relationship, they hear my voice. There’s the result I know them.
That’s the reason I know them. We’ve got intimacy with each other and then here’s the response.
Jesus says, my sheep follow me. That’s how they respond.
They don’t negotiate with me. They don’t ignore me.
They don’t try to circumvent what I’ve told them. They don’t try to pass it off to someone else.
My sheep follow me in jesus’ Day when the shepherd would call his 100 flocks to leave one pasture on a journey toward another.
Even if there was still green grass all around the sheep, the sheep would follow the shepherd away from what appears to be a plush, a plush place where they could still feast where there might still be clear, beautiful water, fresh water for them to drink.
They might not understand why the shepherd is leading them away from this plush place.
But they would still follow if the shepherd called.
And the reason why they would still follow is because they believed they had a good shepherd.
They believe that if he was calling them, there must be greener pastures, there must be still or more fresh, vibrant waters that he’s leading them to.
They trusted the shepherd enough to just go.
When he said, go, the Lord has spoken some things over your life over the past 48 hours or so that you and I have been together.
He has, he said to someone, go home and forgive. He said, realign your priorities.
He has told someone to go home and, and celebrate that spiritual discipline of celebration.
You need some rejoicing back in your life.
He has spoken to somebody in this room and he’s told you to give him your little bit so that he can multiply it to pull those treasures out of the drawer so that he can get busy multiplying those things in your life.
He has told you to turn around leper and be grateful to respond to him in gratitude to not forget to come back and be grateful Eucharist.
He has given you instructions.
Now, the question becomes, will we be a host of women who are hearers of the word and not doers or will we be those that have heard what God’s spirit has said to us?
And we go home and respond in obedience, right?