His Sheep Hear His Voice

God has been training me a lot in hearing His voice this year, or rather, God has been training me in believing that I can hear His voice.

This isn't the first time He's done this. 

I remember a time when I didn't think I could hear His voice at all. The advice of Christian resource after Christian resource was to go into a quiet place, ask a yes or no question, and feel the prodding of the Holy Spirit towards the answer.

Well...I tried. I'd ask a yes or no question, and my mind would jump to a yes...and I'd immediately worry that the only thing I was hearing was my own desire for a yes. Or I'd hear a no...and immediately worry that the only reason I heard a no was because it was the opposite of my desire, and I was predisposed towards believing that if I wanted it, I'd need to sacrifice it to serve God because how could I in my sinful flesh want the same thing as a holy God? And the thing is that the answer I "felt" would oscillate back and forth every time I asked the same question. How was I supposed to discern what was me and what was the Holy Spirit?

My breakthrough came in community. I was sharing a prayer journal, reading back the words I wrote to a mentor, and she commented on the way my disposition changed as I did. How my words became slow and calm and peace overtook me. As we went through the revelations I'd written in my time of prayer, she told me that was what it was like to listen to the Lord.

That was a turning point for me, and for years I pressed in, watching God reveal to me when and how He speaks to me. But this year God has asked me to go a step further. I've felt Him asking me to hold things, to trust Him in them, and to live in the freedom of that goodness. But in that place fear has crept into my experience of His voice. 

Because what if I'm wrong? 

It took me a while to parse why that scared me so much. I literally have an entire blog post about God mobilizing us through a vision for the future, which includes a substantial section on how sometimes the vision isn't as much about the events that will happen but where God wants to turn our heart in a season. I make strong claims in it about how a vision that turns our eyes towards Him has no risk for being wrong (even if it doesn't turn out as we thought) because its effect is drawing us closer to God. And that's what has been true of this season of my life; God has been turning my eyes towards Him in a particular way. 

But if the root of this fear wasn't the pride of being wrong, I thought maybe it could've been fear of disappointment. And while I can struggle with that at times, it isn't primarily related to being right or wrong. I can be disappointed whether or not I choose to believe, and ultimately, I think belief is a risk worth taking. Yes, it has a cost, but in the place of belief we grow in our intimacy with God, which is the greatest gift we could ever have and also becomes a safe place for any disappointments we have. Our disappointments don't devastate us in the same way when we're seeking God's face. Yes, they can still hurt, but they cannot crush us in His presence.

So what was the root of this fear? 

It struck me in the most unlikely of places. My sister was talking about sleep training her child. She had prayed for God to help her, and almost immediately, she felt like He'd brought her a solution. One week later, however, that solution was no longer working, and she needed to make a change. So had she heard God wrong? Her conclusion: no. In fact, she felt like God had so deliberately drawn her to that initial solution to grow her in empathy and unity for moms who choose to raise their children in different ways. She saw it as a beautiful testimony. She focused on what God was doing through the word she had heard instead of on whether the outcome had developed as she'd expected. Because God is not primarily about end results but about what is being produced in us. He does more than an ending; He works in us through His voice.

And that's when it hit. I'm afraid that I can't properly discern God's voice.

I look at how circumstances resolve, and if they don't align with my interpretation of His words (or sometimes in my impatience, if they don't seem to align), I doubt that I heard Him properly. All my confidence becomes food for my shame. Not because I was wrong, but because I was opposed to what God actually wanted while thinking I was aligned with His heart. Where I thought I had heard His voice, I assume I only superimposed my own will and desires onto Him. That I pursued my voice and called it His. And that's such an effective tool for the enemy to use because it casts doubt over every move of God in my heart. If I can't discern Him properly, I won't be in His will, I'll fall from faith, I'll---yeah, big spiral. We can easily see this destructive fruit of self-reliance, but it's a self-reliance that disguised itself as surrender and convinced me it was faithfulness instead of fear.

God has grown me so much this year in holding big things, in trusting Him in the uncertainty, in looking to Him as I wait, but it's so easy for the attack of fear to creep in. To turn my eyes towards my biases and my insufficiency instead of His strength and guidance and goodness. I would believe big and then feare repercussions, assuming my heart was leading me astray instead of focusing on the trust and intimacy cultivated as I sought God.

And what's so hard about this particular fear is that I can so easily support it. My heart can be led astray. I can have emotions that affect how I move in and interpret the world, which may not be consistent with God's heart. But what God has also been instilling in me is the reality that emotions are part of His good. He created us with emotions for a reason, and He uses them. I don't have to fear my emotions being wrong but to submit those emotions to Him, trusting that He can move in them where there is sin or striving or misunderstanding leading them. 

God knows that He doesn't speak to objective creatures, and He actually holds space for our emotions. He can move us from our emotions or through our emotions, but He holds our emotions tenderly, not strong-arming them as I so often try to do but breathing life into them. 

Our emotional pleasure does not necessitate deception, but at times it can actually affirm the peace of receiving God's blessing in a place He cultivated within us. Our confidence isn't in our emotions but in the God who made them. It's not about parsing each emotion for its value but about looking to Him, surrendering our hearts to Him and trusting that He will move what in us needs to be moved.

That's the confidence that fights against every temptation of fear: "we are his people and the sheep of his pasture," and He is the Good Shepherd (Ps. 100:3).

He chases after us. He seeks us out. He pursues us.

Sheep draw into the well of life, but they also wander. But that's not the point. That's not the focus of Scripture. It doesn't matter what the sheep are doing but what the Shepherd is doing, and He is holding His sheep. It is through His strength and His pursuit that we know Him and are secure in His voice. Because as Jesus says, "the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out . . . the sheep follow him, for they know his voice . . . I know my own, and my own know me" (John 10:3;4;13).

It's God Himself who holds us secure, not our own ability. 

God wants to be known by us. He's a God who speaks to us. He's a God who reconciled us to Himself. He's a God who entered into relationship with us. And who will let their friend, their child, their lover walk into destruction and let them go. Will love not compel them to chase after their beloved and seek their good?

This is the confidence of our walk. No, we are not perfect, but our Shepherd is, and He promises to keep us in His pasture. He always leads us back into His presence when we wander. We are secure in His perfect love and perfect pursuit. That is the safety of covenant. That is the truth we live from. And that cannot be shaken because it is the very reality of who God is. He is leading, He is correcting, He is holding tenderly. 

And He doesn't correct by causing doubt, confusion, and fear--that is the voice of lies--but by the conviction of His truth and grace. He leads us into intimacy with Him and shares His very heart. He ministers to us who He is in our every circumstance. Our fears are overcome not in our rightness but in His love. 

We are secure in the Shepherd's voice. 

This is the promise to those who are in God. We are freed from the pain of the fear of mishearing God's voice--of being so confident and yet wrong; we are not put to shame but put into His arms. Because He's the One who keeps our faith secure. And when we get our eyes off of our inadequacies, our potential to wander, and onto His perfect, shepherd's pursuit, onto His very character, we are delivered from our fears. Our spirit's are calmed and restored. We rest in Him. His truth meets the lies. He leads us ever back to His hope and peace.

This is the promise of Scripture: He "delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed" (Ps.34:4b-5). This is the promise of Scripture: "he led out his people like sheep and guided them in the wilderness like a flock" (Ps.78:52). This is the promise of Scripture: "Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out . . . I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep . . . I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak" (Ez. 34:11;15;16). This is the promise of Scripture: the sheep "know his voice" (John 10:4). This is the freedom we have, the freedom of trust in Him.

Seeking God is not about knowing everything or getting it all right but about knowing Him and experiencing His safety. When we seek God, we know an end to striving, an adoption of peace, a renewed hope, a freedom from idolatry, and a guiding intimacy and presence. That is the sweet sound of His voice, and He speaks it over us.