How To hear God’s Voice || Priscilla Shirer

Please Subscribe, like and press notification bell for latest videos

Priscilla Shirer Christian Inspiration Speakers: Priscilla Shirer Footage Licensed Through Filmpac All Audio-Visual content in the video belongs to their respective owners and this channel does not claim their rights. Don’t forget to subscribe our channel to watch new motivational videos.

Good morning, family. Thank you. Good morning.
I’m so great to be able to be with you this morning, this beautiful Sunday morning.
Before you even take your seats, I always have to take a moment and just honor the leaders of this house, not just Henry and Alex, but this whole leadership team.
And I’m gonna tell you why before we just clap them in honor to the lord.
I wanna tell you why because y’all, we have the privilege to be in a lot of different churches and a lot of different streams of the church, a lot of different dominations, different cultures, and backgrounds.
And I want you to know that it’s, sadly, becoming more and more of a rarity when you find a past his family and a team that actually has integrity, like who they are when spotlight is on them, it in a show.
When you’re with them, when nobody’s watching like you realize they’re for real, they, like, really love Jesus.
Sadly, that’s becoming harder and harder to find.
And so I want you to know that god must love you that he has in trusted you, the state, the development, the discipleship of your soul that he has entrusted you to leaders like Alex and like Henry and like this leadership team, would you please celebrate the integrity of this house?
Thank you. Thank you.
Speak to your sons and daughters, lord.
Our ears are open. Our hearts primed to hear a word.
We’re listening in Jesus’ name, Amen. Amen.
I have 3 siblings an older sister and 2 younger brothers.
My sister, she was the 1st grandchild on both sides of my family.
So for dads, parents, moms, parents, Crystal was the 1st grandbaby.
And I hear from people that have grand grandchildren, that you love them all.
You really do love them all, but there’s some about that first one that just does something for you.
And so Crystal was the first one.
So, you know, they named her crystal because she was a light in everybody’s eyes and all that stuff.
And I remember when we were growing up, that my grandparents on daddy’s side, my grandmother would send this box of stuff.
It really would be all of of stuff for crystal. It was all in her size.
I know what her thinking was.
Grandmother’s thinking was that if she sent it in crystal size, then, you know, everybody else would be able to take advantage of it at some point.
So this box would come. It would have Crystal’s name on it.
We’d both stand there together opening up this box of goodies.
And I remember being so excited and intrigued as we opened it up.
Because there were stuff in there that little girls used to wear.
I’m not talking about old navy and baby gaff. Mm-mm.
This was like, you know, the hoop skirts with the lace at the bottom.
And the patent leather shoes and the huge bows.
And so we pull it out and, man, we would be mesmerizing all this stuff.
Now there was 1 year, and I don’t remember exactly why.
Maybe I was just a little bit older that year, but I remember standing there with the box, looking at it as everything coming out in crystal size.
And this particular year, I just wasn’t excited about it, Nomo.
Because I was watching all this stuff come out that I used to think as I used to watch all these dresses and all these big beautiful things coming out of the I used to think it’s okay that it’s in crystal size because she’s soon gonna grow out all this stuff, and it will all soon be mine.
But on this particular occasion, maybe because I was a little bit older, I stood back and I thought, you know what?
I would like a box to come with my name on it.
I want a box to come in the mail with a whole bunch of stuff that’s inside that has been specifically chosen just for me.
And it occurs to me that in our walks with the lord, at some point, you ought to be a little bit mature enough that you become a little bit dissatisfied with hand me down revelation that you’re grateful for secondhand insight, but it doesn’t satisfy by you anymore because all of a sudden you’re thinking, you know what?
I wanna hear the voice of god myself, but I don’t wanna constantly live my entire Christian life being spoon fed the word of god that I don’t wanna have to rely on somebody else to tell me what thus says to the lord that the same holy spirit that lives inside that person whose ministry I might admire that pastor, that teacher, that leader, that writer, that author who helps me, thank you lord, to rightly divide the word of truth that I realize the same holy spirit that lives in them is the same holy spirit that lives in me.
So we can’t be sitting around y’all twiddling our thumbs waiting for the next bit of hand me down revelation.
There’s gotta come a time where you’ve matured enough where you thank god for that, but you wanna hear the voice of god for yourself.
I wanna tell you this morning that god speaks that god desires to speak to you clearly so that you can hear a present tense word straight from the scriptures and by the confirmation of the Holy Spirit that lives on the inside of you He desires to have a personal intimate relationship with you.
Where when you’re reading the scriptures, it’s not just words on a page. It’s not just black.
And white Eden ink, but you come to realize that this book really is alive.
It’s what the old preachers used to call the Illumination of the Scriptures It’s when that thing leaps up off the page.
You’ve had it happen to you before, maybe in your personal quiet time, or you’re sitting in church like this, and there’s a verse you’ve read a million times before.
But on that day, it’s like the Holy Spirit has taken out a divine highlighter And he’s caused that word or that phrase or that verse to leap up off the page and grip you in the depths of your soul.
That’s because god speaks. That’s because the book is alive. God wants to speak to you.
Do you know how much he went through to have a relationship with you?
Do you know how much he’s gone through to make sure that you and he don’t just meet up when you get to heaven?
Because on of y’all. If salvation only meant that we would get to go to heaven, that really would be enough for us to celebrate the rest of our days that he made a way for us to spend eternity with him.
But when that could have been enough for us, it wasn’t enough for him.
He basically said, I don’t wanna wait till you get to heaven to experience heaven.
I wanna give you a little bit of heaven while you’re right here on earth.
He gave us the Holy Spirit so we could know what it is to walk with him and talk with him and have relationship with him.
So no matter what your background is or where you’ve come from or what you’ve done, you need to know that your god desires more than anything else to have with me and with you a personal relationship.
He went to through too much to secure the relationship, to not want you all to take advantage of that intimate opportunity, to have a friendship with one another.
I mean, I want you to think about it before we jump into this text.
I want you to think about how much he’s gone through for you that really it did start before the beginning of time I want you to think of his his desire for you.
In fact, me and Alex were talking about it beforehand. The entire story of scripture is basically a story.
It’s a love letter of him showing you the extent to which he is gone to make sure y’all can have relationship with each other.
It really did start before the beginning of time.
I want you to think of god’s pursuit of you, almost like a cosmic chessboard, God’s been on one side of the chessboard and there is an enemy who’s also been buying for your your soul, your allegiance.
He’s been on the other side of the chessboard both of them vying for your allegiance and friendship and mine.
God made the very first move in Genesis chapter 1 He said, Let there be light. He created the earth.
He created mankind. He gave them a perfect opportunity in the Garden of Eden to have a perfect relay relationship with himself, but then the enemy made a move.
He slithered into the garden. He introduced sin and rebellion into the scene before we know it came has killed Abel.
And now there’s separation between god and man because of sin, and it looks like the enemy has won.
But our god never to be outdone. He made another move on that Cosmic chessboard.
He made it so that Adam and Eve came back together again.
They gave birth to a baby boy named Seth, and Seth gave birth to a baby boy named Inash.
And I don’t know what it was about this brother Inash, but Genesis chapter 4 says that when Inash was born, when Inash was born, everybody began to worship god again.
But then the enemy made it made another move.
He introduced sin and rebellion back into the equation again, and it proliferated so far and so wide that the entire Earth needed to be destroyed by a flood.
This time, for sure, it looked like the enemy had won, but our god never to be outdone.
He made another move. He went and found this man named Noah.
And he said, Noah, I’m a need you to build me an arc because it’s gonna rain.
And Noah had never even seen rain, but through one man’s obedience man time was preserved.
Then the enemy made another move.
He now caused sin and rebellion to proliferate so far and so wide again, and it looked like the enemy had won but then our god made another move.
He went to this little pagan town called er, and he plucked out of it a man named Abraham.
And he said, Abraham, come on and go me.
I’m gonna change your name and change the GPS coordinates on your destiny.
He said, Abraham, look up in the sky. You see all them stars.
I’m about to make an group of people out of you, a nation out of you that will be as vast and as wide as the stars.
They will be my people, and I will be theirs. The god’s people were born.
The enemy made another move. He now caused god’s people to go down into Egypt 400 years of brutal activity and slavery.
And this time, it looked like for sure the enemy had won, but our god, never to be outdone.
He made another move. He showed up in a burning bush in the middle of the backside of the desert, and he said to Moses Moe, it’s time.
Let’s go tell Pedro, let my people go.
And after 10 miraculous plagues and 40 years in the wilderness, they came into the promised land.
And then the enemy made another move.
The book of judges is all about that move because it’s about god’s people being in the promised land, being in the the place where they can have optimum optimum fellowship to experience the presence of god and the promises of god in the place of god but the entire book of judges about the enemy’s move.
In the book of judges, the people of god do not turn their backs on the one true god.
But idolatry is introduced to the people of god.
The entire book of judges listen to me is about the people of god stationing their worst of the one true god alongside their worship of idols.
And it’s the duplicity of the people of god.
That causes such a decline in society that by the time you get to the last line of the book of judges, the last line says and everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes.
Y’all at that don’t sound like America in the year 2023. I don’t know what does.
Now it seemed like for sure the enemy had won, but our god made another move, and her name was Ruth.
And Ruth’s story started off a lot of, kind of sketchy, a lot of grief, and a lot of loss, a lot of relocation.
It seemed like nothing would come of her story, but at the right time in the right way at the right place, her path crossed with a man named Boaze who would be her Ken mck kinsman redeemer.
The two of them came to together and they gave birth to a baby boy named Obed.
And Obed gave birth to Jesse, and Jesse gave birth to a little baby boy named David.
And with that one move, the enemy didn’t even know it, but the checkmate was already on the way.
And then the old testament closed, and there’s 400 years of silence between the old testament and the new testament.
God is sitting on one side of the cosmic chessboard, and the enemy is sitting on the other side for 400 years.
Nobody makes a move, and all of history has had and the balance waiting to see who’s gonna make this next move.
And then the new testament opens and god makes a move, the likes of which the enemies still to this day has never had a response.
Enter Jesus Christ. Basically, god puts on flash and says, you know what?
Let me just go ahead and come down and take care of this myself.
And he lives a perfect life. He died a substitutionary death.
And then 3 days later, y’all, he got up out of the grave, and the resurrected is the receipt of our relationship with Jesus.
And all I’m saying to you is Do you think he went through all of that to save you, but he doesn’t love you enough to talk to you?
He desires. Can’t you see his pursuit?
He desires to actually have a relationship with you and you with him He wants you to hear his voice.
And one of the clearest places in scripture where Jesus himself speaks of the privilege this opportunity that we have to have the leading of the Holy Spirit in our life through the illumination of god’s holy word is in John chapter 10.
I’m gonna read you Jesus words from John chapter 10 verses 1 through 5.
And then we’re gonna camp out at verse 27 for a few minutes this morning. Are y’all with me?
Everybody okay? K. John chapter 10 verse 1 through 5 says this, Jesus says, 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.
Well, he’s a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
To him, the doorkeeper opens and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out.
Sounds like freedom to me.
First 4 says, when he puts forth all his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
And a stranger, they simply will not follow.
They will flee from him because they do not know the voice of a stranger.
And then verse 27, Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice.
I know them and they follow me.
Listen, I don’t know if you highlight or underline stuff in your Bible or your electron Bible, but if you do this right here, this one liner in verse 27 is one that deserves to be underlined.
Jesus says, my sheep what they do is hear my voice.
I know them, and they follow me.
There are four things here that Jesus brings our mind and our attention as we explore this privilege that we have to hear the voice of god And oftentimes when Jesus would speak in these unfamiliar terms, it’s possible for it to go right over our head, you know, when he’s talking about stuff like wheat, and grape and soil and sheep.
Like, sometimes we can miss it because we live in a modern age where we don’t deal with those things on a regular basis.
So Come and take a journey with me for just a few moments back into the 1st century in the middle eastern time frame so that we can see what Jesus was worth foreign to and what he was trying to explain to the people he was speaking to then and by the power of the Holy Spirit when he’s choosing to speak to us today.
Right now on this Sunday in 2023.
In Jesus’ day, when a shepherd was leading sheep, there could be one Shepherd matched up with about 100 sheep.
He would leave this 100 all throughout the day to green pastures and distill waters.
But he wouldn’t be by himself.
There would be upwards of 10 shepherds together, leading their 100 in and around the same vicinity throughout the day.
So all ten would remain kind of in close proximity.
In the evening, these 10 shepherds would bring all 100 of each of their flocks to one fold for the night.
So there would be a 1000 sheep, let’s say, in one fold.
The fold was made of, like, a stone high or a stone fence that was about waist high.
It would encompass a enormous area where 1000 sheep could go for the evening.
There would be one opening within the stone fence line, one gap, one margin there, but it would not have a door, just an opening.
1 of the shepherds would stay The other 9 after dropping off their their flocks would go back into the city to sleep for the night, but there was one that would stay behind.
He would become what was called like the porter for the evening.
He would literally lay his body across the opening of the sheep fold and become the door of the fold.
His home responsibility was pro to protect the flocks that were inside.
He was there to make sure no predator, no stranger came in and took advantage of the sheep.
And in the morning, when one of the shepherds would return, he would see a shepherd coming from afar, and he would evaluate to make sure that this shepherd coming was actually a true shepherd of one of the flocks inside.
And when he authenticated that this was indeed a true shepherd, he would remove his body from the opening of the sheep fold.
He would let that shepherd pass into the fold, and the shepherd would come into the fold, listen to me, and he would call his sheep.
All 1000 would physically hear the call, but only 100 of them would recognize the call as having come from their shepherd.
And whether or not they recognize that voice had nothing to do with whether or not they were black sheep or white sheep.
It didn’t matter whether they were high priced sheep or cheaply discarded runs.
It didn’t matter if they congregated with a whole lot of sheep or just a small group of sheep.
It didn’t matter if they were on the south side of the fold or the north side of the fold.
The only thing that mattered as to whether or not that they recognized that voice was whether or not they had a relationship with that shepherd.
Jesus says in John 1027, my sheep are the ones who will hear my voice.
Y’all, the very first thing he points out and as to whether or not you and I will be able to actually cultivate this relationship with god where our spiritual ears are open to hear the voice of god is whether or not we have a relationship with him.
I’m gonna ask you now. And then y’all before this Sunday is over, I’m gonna ask you again the most important question that you can ever be asked and that is do you personally have a relationship with god through Jesus Christ because I’m gonna tell you there’s only one way to have a relationship with god and that is through Jesus Christ.
There are no other options.
He is not one of many potential solutions, many potential bridges between you and god There is only one name by which men can be saved, and that is through the name of Jesus Christ.
And, oh, it’s not politically correct to say it anymore, but I’m too old for political correctness.
I want you to know that Jesus is the way the truth and the life and that no one comes to the father except through him.
So I want you to know that you can have a relationship with god.
You can hear the voice of god, but you to make sure that you’ve placed faith in him.
I’m not asking you whether you’ve been in church all your life.
I’m not asking you whether you’re a good person who does good stuff. I’m not asking you whether you’ve served.
I’m not asking you whether, you know, your grandmother and them were saved.
I hope they were, but listen, god doesn’t have grandchildren.
You have to have made your own choice to place faith in Jesus Christ.
So I just want you to think for a second as to whether or not you know that you have accepted Jesus Christ as your savior because that relationship is what gives you opportunity to hear the voice of god.
So I grew up I did grow up in church, and I remember, you know, we would sit on the same side of church every Sunday, second row piano side.
The only time I wasn’t sitting with my mom and siblings second row piano side is if I was singing in the children’s choir.
So we’d be up there in the children’s choir.
I don’t know how many of y’all went to church back in the day when they were.
But we would sit up there, you know, with our little hoop skirts on, and we would sing our a and b selection.
But then after we sang all little children’s choir songs, well, now we had to sit through the rest of the service.
Lord have mercy. So we’re up there in the choir loft and we’re trying to behave, but, you know, we’re kids.
So we start passing gum with chewing gum and then we start writing notes. Do you like me?
Check yes, no, or maybe. And we’re passing notes around.
And every now and then, I would glance up And if I glanced up and caught my momma’s eye and she saw me up there doing all that stuff, let me tell you something lower didn’t have to say anything.
She just had that mama eye. Does anybody know what I’m talking about?
I’m talking about where your mama look at you and terror grips your soul.
Because you already know her facial expression tells you a whole lot.
Now someone else could see that same expression, and they wouldn’t get the full ripple effect of what that expression means.
The reason why you know is because you’re in the family. The same thing is true.
Like if you have a joke, a running joke between you and your friend, you know, you and your girlfriend, y’all been friends for 20 years and man, you can just say one word and there’s hilarity that evolves from that one word because y’all y’all were there.
You know the story you have history. And then you try to explain that to somebody else.
And, I mean, you’re telling them the whole story, and they’re just kinda looking at you blankly.
And it doesn’t hit them the same way because no matter how you try to explain it to them, they’re just weren’t there.
They’re not part of the family.
Well, when you place faith in Jesus Christ, you are you are fitted with spiritual perception and senses that allow you now to be tapped into family information.
Ephesians chapter 2 verse 19 in the amplified Bible puts it this way.
Therefore, You are no longer strangers, outsiders, exiles, migrants, aliens excluded from the rights of citizens, But now, you share citizenship with the saints of god.
You are god’s own people. You are consecrated and set part for himself. You belong to god’s own household.
You are part of the family of god.
And when you’re part of the family, your privy to family conversations.
Romans chapter 1 verse 20 says that he is always speaking Roman chapter 1 tells us about general revelation.
General revelation means that even the unbelieving should be able to look at the things that god has created, like there shouldn’t be no way you can look at the stars hanging in the sky.
The sun staying stationed in its place and then swapping places with the moon and the e you shouldn’t be able to see the mountain ranges or the ocean that is supernaturally held back from the earth.
You shouldn’t be able to see the works of creation and not know there’s got to be a god somewhere.
Like, the psalmist said, it’s the fool that says in his heart.
There is no god because there’s general re revelation coming to all of us all the time simply through what it is that god has created.
But if you’re anything like me, you don’t just want you’re grateful for general general revelation but you’re not satisfied with just general stuff.
You want a specific word, a package to come with your name on it.
You need counseling insight on what god would have you to do, whether to move to this part of town or this part of town, whether to choose that job or this job, whether to marry this mate or this potential may, whether to govern your life in a certain way in this direction or that direction, we need guidance personally from the Holy Spirit.
And those of us who are able to be able to be led by the Holy Spirit of God, it means that you have a relationship with him.
That’s when the word comes. Why?
When you realize it’s not just words on a page that hearing god can I just tell you y’all It’s less about newness?
It’s about nowness. What I mean by that is it’s a real old book, but all of a sudden, it has present tense application.
It’s when you’re sitting in church and pastor Henry or pastor Alex.
They stand up to teach from the from the scriptures that day, and has it ever happened to you that the pastor gets up to preach and they read the passage for the day.
And all of a sudden, you feel like there’s a spotlight on you.
You feel like you’re the only person in the room.
You’re trying to figure out Did the church bug my house?
How did they know that this is exactly what it is that I needed to to get direction on or incidental?
That’s the lord. Speaking to you.
And the challenge is when we feel conviction, we’re sitting in a setting like this and we feel our hearts burning on the inside of us The challenge in our tendency is to poke the person next to us and say, girl, did you hear that?
That’s for you. You need to know you need to hear that.
We feel something that’s convicting, and we tap our spouse and go, are you listening?
This is what you need to get your light together.
Why is it that we think when we’re convicted, it’s for everybody else except us?
But if you’re being convicted, that’s because he’s talking to you.
And god does not speak to be heard. He speaks to be obeyed.
So we didn’t watch a lot of TV when I was growing up, mostly because, you know, you got 4 small kids.
You’re busy. He’s homework to do their tours, there’s dinner dishes, all the things.
So we don’t have time for a lot of TV.
We could watch TV on the weekends, but our parents didn’t let us really watch it through the week, except on Thursday nights.
At 7 o’clock. Because Thursdays at 7 PM, the cosby show came on.
And then we could keep on watching past first half hour because at 7:30 PM, a different world came on.
Come on. Y’all know about a different world, don’t you?
Listen, if you have never seen a different world, you need to bless yourself.
Just start from season 1 episode 1 and follow Dwayne and Whitley’s whole situation. It’ll bless your life.
So from 7 to 8 PM, the whole family we’d sit around and take the, yeah, TV and we watched that.
But that was pretty much the extent of our TV watching situation.
We didn’t have cable, no DIRECTV, nothing like that, just regular old channels, and we didn’t watch it that much.
So when I, uh, went to college and I went to graduate school, and then I was gonna get married to Jerry.
My husband who is here with me. We’ve married 24 years now. But when we were getting thank you.
Oh, that’s him. I’m gonna intro to Jerry. Just stand up and let I know.
He doesn’t like to be just stand up, babe. That’s Jerry, y’all.
That’s my man. You fine?
So I moved into the apartment we were going to be living in together after we got married.
I moved in there about a month before we got married.
One of the very first things I did was call the cable company and say I can’t wait for y’all to come and hook me up.
It’s like, for the first time in my life, I was gonna have cable and all the all the whole thing.
And so I remember the day the cable guy came, He pushed the armor forward because, you know, this was back in the day where the television was a box.
Like, there was nothing flat about it 24 years ago. Right? So it’s a whole box.
It’s inside of a piece of furniture. He pushed it forward. He went behind the piece of furniture.
He’s, you know, back there hooking up all these cords and all these cables attaching them to the wall He moved the furniture back, and then he came up around the front of it, gave me the remote control and said, alright, let me make sure you know how this works.
Push the guide button. And I will never forget the old, so glorious day.
When I pushed the guide button and I was mesmerized to see all these networks, all these states all these shows, all these options that were all of a sudden available to me.
Now the cable guy didn’t create those options.
He just gave me the right hookup so I could access the options.
Those options had always been there. They’d always been available.
It’s just that didn’t have the right hookup to access them.
The moment you place faith in Jesus Christ, y’all, you get the hookup.
The Holy Spirit gives you access to divine channels that are always available to us.
But if you don’t the right hookup. You can’t hear them. You can’t tap into them. You can’t access them.
But just like there are 5 physical senses, with which we relate to the physical world, to touch them, to smell them, to feel them, to interact with them.
There are divine senses, sacred senses, the holy spirit shakes them awake from their spiritual slumber at the moment of salvation, and then he heights in your spiritual senses so that you are able to detect like a radar you’re able to detect the movement of god, the hand of god, the the word of god, that you’re able to see what other people cause called coincidence, you’re able to look at it and go, uh-uh, that wasn’t coincidence.
That was god working stuff out in my favor.
When other folks think they’re lucky stars, you’ll be able to say, uh, uh, it’s nothing about those stars.
It’s the maker of the stars. That is orchestrating the details of my life.
The Holy Spirit becomes the hookup, and you have access to the word of god, the red light of conviction that will mean stop.
The yellow light of dis ease that means slow down or the green light of peace.
That means go. The Holy Spirit allows you to access those divine frequencies so that you can hear the voice of god.
And so Jesus says the relationship is how this starts. My sheep hear my voice.
He says, here’s the result of the relationship that you should expect and anticipate that you will hear the voice of god.
It’s the result, meaning it’s the automatic default position and privilege of everyone who has placed faith in Jesus Christ that you will be able to hear the voice of god.
The reason why this is important is because the enemy is trying to convince you and trying to convince me that hearing god is some special thing for only the the elite that that there are some people that have a special hotline connection with god that everybody else doesn’t have access to.
That if you don’t, you know, have a seminary degree, you can’t hear the voice of god.
That if you aren’t the person who is in vocational ministry, that you can’t hear the voice of god, that if you’re just a regular girl, a regular guy, a husband, a wife, and if you’re just walking through the rhythms of regular life, that that’s something other folks, but that’s not something for you.
But Jesus breaks down that right off the bat, and he says, no.
If we have a relationship, you should expect and anticipate that your privilege, your right as a son or a daughter, is that you will get this result you can hear the voice of god.
It’s a part of your inheritance and so the enemy wants to convince you and me too difficult, that it’s too hard, that it’s something for other people, but it’s not something for you.
But the result of your relationship is that you will hear the voice of god.
My sheep hear my voice. I know them.
He points out a relationship a result, and then he says there’s a reason for all of this because I know my sheep.
Okay. I called up someone I know who works with sheep and cattle so that I could ask them about this particular part of the verse.
Because I don’t know if y’all can tell by looking at me or not, but I’m not really a sheep and cattle kinda sister.
So I called up somebody.
I know who works with sheep and cattle to ask them about this little phrase. I know my sheep.
He said to me, well, Priscilla, it’s interesting because knowing the sheep now is a lost art as a shepherd.
He said, as someone who works as a rancher, a sheep, and cattle.
He said, knowing my sheep is a lost art. It’s not something I have to do anymore.
Because technology has so modernized that we don’t actually have to know our sheep to get them to do what we want them to do.
Cause see, now we have electric fences Now we can embed chips.
Now we have helicopters that can herd huge uh-uh flocks all at the same time.
We don’t have to know our sheep.
He said back in Jesus Day, all they had was time and relationship.
All they did was wander around together all day long, the sheep next to the shepherd, the shepherd constantly make sure that the sheep could hear his voice.
He would speak over them. He would sing over them just so they would come to be able to recognize the cadence and the rhythm and the voice of their particular shepherd.
He said that the the shepherd would study all of his sheep if he had a 100 of them.
He knew which one had a blemish there. Which one had a weakness there?
Which one was a little hard headed?
Which one needed to be told the same thing over and over again until they actually got and would obey what it is that the shepherd would say.
He knew their personalities and all the nuances of them and the sheep knew him.
And the rancher told me that the shepherds would know their sheep so well and vice versa that the shepherd could call the entire flock or He could change the tone of his call just a little bit and call one sheep out of the flock.
That’s how well they knew each other.
So y’all the advances in modern technology have not changed the shepherd’s desire to get to know us.
But if we’re not careful, it’ll change our desire to get to know him.
We’ll be so busy with formulas and pro brands and the newness of advancements and technology that we don’t even just take the time to sit in the presence of god anymore to get to know his character to get to know what he would say and what he wouldn’t say, what the cadence of his voice sounds like.
You’re gonna have to get to know him.
Get to know him through the scriptures, as I said last night, get to know the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Because with everything else that is changing in y’all in our world, y’all, There is one thing who who remains the same one person who remains the same.
He is the same. Thank you, lord, yesterday, today, and forevermore so you can believe that who he was is still who he is so that when someone comes to you and says god says this, you’ll be able to say, uh, uh, that can’t be what he said because that doesn’t match up with his character and it doesn’t match up with his word.
So my brother, Anthony, um, we have 2 brothers, Anthony and Jonathan.
Anthony Junior looks just like my daddy. Okay? They’re both Tony Evans, senior engineer. They have the same name.
They have the same, uh, voice a tone. They talk alike. They walk alike. They these brothers are just alike.
I have seen Anthony throughout his life use that to his advantage. I’ve watched him.
Like there have been a a couple times, he was maybe flying on American Airlines where my dad has all these miles racked up from traveling.
He’d go up to the counter and show his license.
It said Tony Evans so that people would pull up my dad’s profile and upgrade Anthony and give him 1st class treatment, and Anthony would just milk it.
I remember growing up someone would call the house.
They would think they were talking to Tony Evans Senior but they were talking to Tony Evans Junior and Anthony would just get all the juicy details of the phone call before saying hang on.
Let me get my dad for you. I’ve seen them people be fooled by the 2 Tony’s.
But I’m a tell you one person, there are several of us that can’t be fooled in the first 10 seconds of a conversation with either of the 2 entities.
I know which one I’m talking to.
And the reason why I can differentiate even though they’re so similar is because I know them.
There is an enemy who is trying to deceive you and he will, if you and I don’t get the opportunity, take on the opportunity of getting to know our savior.
But the more you know him, the more clearly you will be able to hear him.
My sheep There’s the relationship. Know my voice. There’s the result of the relationship.
I know them there’s the reason and he says there is only one accurate response.
They follow me. They don’t negotiate with me.
They don’t ignore me.
They don’t hope that I will stop saying that thing to them and pass it on to somebody else.
Nope. The only response of the sheep is that they follow the shepherd.
And the reason why they follow the shepherd is because they believe they have a good shepherd.
They know that even if in the Middle Eastern sheepfold, those sheep knew that even if they were currently looking at green pastures, if the shepherd led them away from those green pastures, getting at the pastures they were going to, were greener than the ones they were leaving behind.
They believe that no matter what it was that was currently around them, they wouldn’t get comfortable there.
Nope if the Shepherd said go.
Because they knew he was good and kind that he was taking them exactly where they needed to be.
Y’all, the Bible says that you have a good shepherd.
And not only his he good, but Hebrews chapter 13 verse 20 says you have a great Shepherd, that he’s got your back, that he is leading you by still waters and green pastors that he knows the plans he has for you.
Plans to give you a future and hope. Plans to prosper you not to harm you. He loves you.
He’s got your back. If the shepherd is saying come with me, I assure you the best response is yes, sir.
Let’s go. Not later right now. Because delayed obedience is still disobedience.
The only response is. FOow. Yeah.
There was a music video that was out many years ago.
It was Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean. You might recall in that video.
He is dancing as he masterfully did along a pathway.
And as he moves forward down this pathway, everywhere he steps, light lights up.
There’s another square under his feet that lights up.
The director of that particular video was being interviewed about that experience.
And as they interviewed him, they asked him, how was it working?
With such a talented, gifted artist.
And he said, well, the hardest part of working with him was the fact that I had to go to him beforehand and say, listen.
We know you could dance your way all over this studio today, but I need you to know that I have already gone before you and I have pre lit certain squares.
And so if you exhaust yourself dancing everywhere and yet not stepping on the squares that I have pre lit, you’ll be doing all that work, but the path won’t light up.
You’ll be stepping any and everywhere except where I have already predestined for you to step And when you step where I want your feet to go, you need to know that it will make your path light up so that this picture will look the way it is supposed to look.
So he said to MJ, you gotta rein in all your impulses to do everything and just do what I, as the direct I’m asking you to do.
Ephesians chapter 2 says that he has gone before you to pre light squares.
So our responsibility as believers who are in relationship with him is to pause, to rein in all our impulses, to do it our way, to do it in our timing to do it in the way that we would most deem is the most suitable way in this situation and just say, lord, I come to to ask you to speak to me.
And then, father, as you give me direction, I’m gonna trust you that if you have asked me to step in a particular place or in a particular direction.
That means you have preemit this to light up with your blessing, to light up with your favor, to light up with your grace, to go before me so that I can live the picture that you have predestined for me, but it all starts with relationship.
Will you bow your heads with me?
I am going to ask you if you have a relationship with Jesus Christ point blank period.
It’s the most important question of the day.
I’m going to ask you if you can recall a time when you place faith in Jesus Christ.
And if you can’t, there ain’t no shame in it, but this is the day of your salvation.
There is no way that he brought you in this room to hear Jesus to hear his own words from John chapter 10 and then not invite you into an opportunity to be able to make sure that from this point forward, you have the privilege to hear the voice of god.
To start fine tuning your spiritual ears so that you can grow in this discipline for the rest of your life.
Neither you nor I will ever perfectly earned god’s leading in our life.
We’re gonna constantly be growing in this area, but it begins here with a relationship.
So as every head is bowed and eyes are closed, if you were in this room and you’re not sure and you just wanna make sure today, would you just raise hand if that’s yours and maybe raise your eyes till my eyes reach yours that I know that today, this is a decision that you need to make to receive Jesus Christ, Sister, and come into ship with him.
Anybody? Just wave at me if your hands up till I see you.
Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. Everybody else. Yes, young man. I see you. Yes, sir. Yes.
Yeah. I see you.
See a young lady. Yes, ma’am.
It’s okay. We got a minute. Yes, ma’am. Don’t leave. Y’all don’t leave.
In fact, if your heart is burning within you right now, just kinda saying, gosh, I wish she’d move on from this.
That’s probably because it’s you. Needs to raise your hand. Yes, ma’am. Yes.
I see you. Anybody else? Just wait. Yes, sis. I see you. Yes, brother.
I see you. Yes. Anybody else? I see you.
Young teenagers, 20 somethings. I see you. Hi, sweet girl. I see you.
I see your hand raised. Y’all, can we all stand together? I see you, brother. I see you.
Can we all stand the bible says if you confess with your mouth and you believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is lord, you shall be safe.
He’s already done all the heavy lifting.
Remember, I told you the whole story of everything he went through for you, the hound of heaven has been coming for you your whole life to make sure they your eyes could be open and your heart could be ready for this moment right here.
He’s done all the heavy lifting. All you’re doing is receiving gift. So I’m gonna pray this prayer.
There’s no magic in the words of the prayer. You just have to believe it in your heart.
In fact, can all pray this prayer together so that we can build an atmosphere of faith for those who are praying it for the very first time.
Let’s pray together, largely this.
I am a sinner in need of a savior, and I believe that you are that savior.
So today, I place faith alone in Christ alone, to remove my sins, take up residence in me, in the person of the Holy Spirit right now in Jesus’ name.
In Jesus saying. Come on, everybody. Shout a mess.