Message Balls Blog

I had heard God speak within me and each time had been a profound experience. I‘d also followed God to places way outside my comfort zone, learning to do things I would never have guessed I could do. On Sheep Road I was led to believe that hearing God’s voice and following Him can become more natural than I thought.

About half the way home from visiting our Texas friends we decided to stay the night in New Mexico. While pulling into a parking space in the motel lot, I heard a voice within me say “Park on the other side.” Quickly comparing the two spots I thought, “Oh what’s the difference” and continued into the first space, ignoring the little voice. Unfortunately, while we were leaving, I discovered the difference between the two areas.

As I was backing out of the parking space, there was a loud crashing noise, and our car suddenly stopped and wouldn’t go any further. I had hit something, but what? I couldn’t see anything. It turned out to be a concrete planter directly behind our car, too low to be seen in the rear view mirror. I probably could have seen it in the backup camera and heard the warning beeps if I’d been paying attention instead of talking to Jim at the time. Too late for any of that, the damage had been done. What bothered me the most was ignoring the little voice, especially after realizing that if I’d obeyed the voice, the planter would have been in front of the car allowing plenty of room to safely back up.

It was a hard lesson, but it got my attention and motivated me never again to ignore the voice. Though I tried, there were still times when I wasn’t sure if it was God’s voice or just my own thoughts in my head I was hearing. Feeling unsure about when to follow the voice and when not to, one day the voice showed up to help me.

It happened at Bible study while serving as Audio/Visual Tech–another job I’d been called to do that I knew nothing about. I planned to continue another year as a greeter, a role I’d become quite comfortable in since I was also a greeter at my church. But when I reported to the door the first morning of the new class year, I was asked to serve as an Audio/Visual Tech. “What?! I replied, “I know nothing about that!” After learning that my name had come to the Leaders Council while praying for God to provide someone for the position, what could I say? I wasn’t going to say no to God, so here I go again learning something new.

I was shown to the sound booth and got started by merely doing what I was asked to do. Later there were a couple of training sessions to learn the equipment basics, but mostly I learned by doing each week. Along with setting up the microphones and equipment for the worship team, I was responsible for “mic”ing the Teaching Director before her lecture and removing it afterward. I also advanced the PowerPoint slides by following her cues. This one morning her outline had several more points than usual, and she spoke quickly to fit them all in. So fast that the ladies had trouble keeping up with filling in the answers on their printed outlines before the next slide appeared. A couple of ladies came to the booth during the lecture to inform us about it, and we told them we’d put the answers up at the conclusion.

My routine at the conclusion of the lecture was to make my way up the aisle to remove the teaching director’s microphone, squeezing by all the ladies on their way out. That morning they were blaming me for missing answers on their outlines. One lady even stopped me and said, “You can’t go that fast, you need to slow down!” I quickly answered by saying, “I follow Sharon’s cues.” As I continued to the stage these words came to me: “You knew who to follow in that instance. It can be the same with Me.” Immediately I knew it was the Lord, there was no doubt. I was so excited that by the time I reached the Teaching Director I blurted out what had happened and what I had heard the Lord say to me.

Not long after, I came upon an online sermon series based on what Jesus said about hearing His voice: “My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me.” Pastor Keith Moore talked about what it said in ways I hadn’t thought of before, pointing out that the only qualifier is being one of His sheep. I knew I was, I had accepted Jesus into my heart and was trying to follow Him, I just hadn’t thought of it as the only requirement to hearing His voice. Also seeing that it’s a fact that His sheep hear His voice confirmed for me that it had been God’s voice I ’d been hearing throughout my journey. So then, if I’d already been hearing His voice, what was the Lord trying to tell me that morning at Bible study?

After some thought, it became apparent that I needed help with the “following” part of the verse since I’d heard His voice and still ended up wrecking the bumper of our car. So I did what pastor Moore did and went line by line dissecting what God spoke to me. First I heard Him say, “You knew who to follow in that instance.” So I asked myself, “How did I know to follow Sharon?” She’s the teaching director, following her came with deciding to accept the Tech position. Each week she goes over her lecture notes, giving me cues, so when I hear her say certain things, I’ll know what to do. That’s when the second part, “It can be the same with Me,” started to make sense. I can follow God the same way I knew to follow Sharon! It’s the same process–following Jesus came with my decision to accept Him into my heart. He has given me a copy of His notes (the Bible) and has put His voice (the Holy Spirit) within me, so when I hear Him say certain things, I’ll know what to do.

It finally dawned on me that the lesson on Sheep Road was on learning how I can follow God’s voice over all the other voices, including my own, that are clamoring for me to follow them. Seeing it so powerfully illustrated in my personal experience helped me to realize I’ve been given everything I need to follow Him. I just need to pay closer attention to what I see in the Bible and to what I hear Him say within me.

To be continued . . . see Legion Hill

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 22nd, 2018 at 10:44 am and is filed under The road to the greater life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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