Pray and Listen

Transcript (Auto-generated)

Thank you, Lindell and the team, so good to sing God's praise, amen. My name's Dave, one of the pastors here, and it's my joy to open up God's Word with you this morning. We're continuing our mini series, as Lindell said, Crossing the Car Park, Opportunities to Engage, and this is following on from our case study we did last term on discipleship. As Pastor Doug pointed out last week, we've been through this integrated study, all of last term looking at discipleship, and we don't want to just sit there, we don't want to just leave with a head full of knowledge, we want to be active participants with the Holy Spirit in our discipleship journey.

So last week, Pastor Doug kicked off our series for us looking at what it means to purposely withdraw and meditate, to fill up on God, so that when he prompts us to go, to engage, to cross the car park into our week, we can fill out that call and that mandate that we've been given as followers of Jesus to continue his mission of sharing the gospel with the world. We saw how important that was last week for our effectiveness as disciples to be withdrawing and meditating, to be filling up on God, and I just wonder how you went last week with that.

If you grabbed one of the exercises, the little resources, the tools that Pastor Doug put in your hands, if you did that last week, how'd you go? Was it a good time? Was it easy to do? I hope that went well for you. We've got another tool, resource for you today as we look at praying and listening to God, and I'd encourage you to get into that, to actually engage with it. Don't just let it be knowledge that you take in, but action that we do in response to all that God is saying to us. So we're going to look at pray and listening this week, and we're going to start with prayer right now as we come to God's word.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we do thank you for inviting us to pray. Teach us, Lord, as we seek to better understand how to pray and how to listen to your voice so that we might grow in relationship with you, our God, so that we might be effective in your kingdom as we engage in the mission to which Jesus has called us as his disciples. Father, we thank you for these words of Scripture, which you've given to us. Help us by your Holy Spirit to hear what it is that you might want to say to us today as we open your word together.

Lead us, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

The first thing we need to establish right up front at the outset is that disciples of Jesus are people who pray. Prayer is essential to our relationship with God. It's a vital part of our daily walk with God. Prayer is communion with God. It's sharing our thoughts and our feelings in a deep and intimate way. It's talking with God. It's relating to God. It's communicating with Him. One of the wonderful things about prayer is that we can talk to God anywhere at any time about anything. It's interesting as you look at what the Bible has to say about prayer, the Bible just assumes that God's people will pray to Him all the way through it, just assumes that God's people will pray.

If you've got your Bible there, open up to Luke chapter 11. We're going to look briefly to begin with at what Jesus had to say about prayer when one of his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. Luke chapter 11. Look at those first four verses of Luke chapter 11.

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he'd finished, one of the disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples. He said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread, forgive our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us and lead us not into temptation. Notice Jesus begins, he says, when you pray. He's not saying if you're going to pray or if you might pray, he just assumes that his disciples will be people who pray.

So he says, when you pray, and he goes on with teaching the Lord's prayer. You might have noticed that Luke's record here is a shorter version of the longer one that we read from Matthew's account, which we prayed earlier together today, Matthew 6 verses 9 to 13, if you want to check that out during the week. But if you look in your Bible in Luke there, you might have some little footnotes, some tiny little letters, A, B, C, D, above some of the words in verses 2 and 4. If you look down at the footnotes, you'll see that it tells you that there are some manuscripts of Luke's gospel that include those extra bits that Matthew records.

But not all the manuscripts have that there. So the scholars, the ones who put it all together, they just make a note of that for us so that we know that it's there. Don't need to get caught up on the differences. These are just two accounts from two different people who are reporting on the life and ministry and the words of Jesus. And so it makes sense that two different people recording the same event might have slightly different remembrances of what was said, or two different people writing to two different audiences will have different focuses that they want to bring out in the things in which they write.

So don't worry too much about the differences, don't want you to get distracted on that today. The thing that we want to focus on is that Jesus assumes that his disciples will be people who pray. We see that repeated throughout the New Testament. Philippians chapter four, verse six, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God in everything. It's just assumed that we'll be praying about it all. One Thessalonians five verses 16 to 17, we're told to be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

It's a mark of Christian obedience when we come to God in prayer. So we need to know that from the beginning. It's just assumed that disciples will be people who pray. The second thing we want to look at this morning is that our Heavenly Father actually invites us to pray. That's Jesus says there that the Father invites us to pray. This is how we're to pray. He says that in verse two of Luke chapter 11, we're to pray to our Heavenly Father. It's a powerful image and a personal invitation to approach the living God, to know him like a child would know their dad.

It's quite a personal word, Father. It's a relationship word, isn't it? Jesus says this is how we're to come to God in prayer, like a dependent child. We're invited to trust him and know him as our Heavenly Father. Look down at verses five to 10 of Luke chapter 11 and see how Jesus drives this point home a little bit clearer. This picture of God as our Heavenly Father, it's central to our understanding of prayer. Look at verses five to 10.

Then Jesus said to them, suppose you have a friend. You go to him at midnight and you say, friend, lend me three loaves of bread. A friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I've no food to offer it. Suppose the one inside answers, don't bother me. The door is already locked and my children are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Lock and the door will be open to you for everyone who asks, receives the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks the door will be opened. The point Jesus is making here is that even if this friend who's woken up in the middle of the night, maybe a little bit cranky because of the interruption to their sleep, even if this friend who's been woken up will bother getting up to help their friend, how much more will God, our heavenly Father, listen and answer our prayers when we call on him.

He continues and says in the next verse, which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. Jesus is homing in on this image of the Father in this illustration suggesting there's no way a dad would ever prank their kids like this. A father wouldn't do such a thing.

And the analogy he gives is if earthly dads, we who are stained by sin, we who aren't perfect, who make mistakes, who get it wrong from time to time, if we wouldn't think of doing that to our kids, then how much more will God give good things, namely the blessing of his indwelling Holy Spirit to his children. Jesus tells us that we've got a loving heavenly Father in heaven who cares deeply about us. And he invites us to come to him like a dependent child and pray to him, to trust him, to ask him for stuff.

We know that we've got a Father who invites us to pray, and he loves it when we speak to him. Not only that, but we see Jesus' action in our prayers. He makes our prayers acceptable to God. To understand this idea, we need to take note of some of the symbolism that we see in the Old Testament as God gave the worship practices to his people. You can read during the week, if you like, in Exodus chapter 30, verses 1 to 10, about this. There's a section in Exodus 30 where God is giving Moses and the Israelites instructions about how to construct the tabernacle, how they were going to worship him.

And one of the things they were instructed to build is this altar of incense. This was a place where they would burn incense to God, and this incense, the smoke that rose up, symbolized the prayers of God's people. What would happen is the priests would go in and pray, and they would burn this incense on the altar, and it symbolized to all of them there, that the prayers of God's people were going up to him. One of the interesting things that would happen before the altar of incense would be used is that on each day of atonement, some of the blood for the sacrifice for sin was sprinkled onto the horns of that altar.

Why did the priests do it that way? Well, it was to serve as a reminder of the fact that the prayers of God's people are only acceptable to him if the people themselves have been made acceptable to God. It was a reminder that the sacrifice for the sins of the people had to take place first before they could be right with God. It was a reminder of just how serious sin is in breaking that relationship that we have with God. So when it comes to communion, to relationship with God, we've got to have that sin problem dealt with.

Only then can we be right with him. Only then will we know that our prayers are acceptable in his presence and rise up to him like incense. Friends, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done that for us. He is the once for all sacrifice for our sins. He is our great high priest who stands in the presence of God and makes intercession for us. He's the one who makes our prayers acceptable to God. Turn over in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 10, Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19 to 22. Writer to the Hebrews says, therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is his body.

And since we've got a great high priest over the house of God, then let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. You get the picture there? In Jesus, we have access to God the Father. In Jesus, we have an advocate who stands before God on our behalf. In Jesus, we've been made acceptable to God. Because of what Christ has done, we can draw near to him, we can enter into his presence.

We can know that our prayers that we offer up to him are acceptable to him. Come back a few chapters in Hebrews chapter 4, verses 14 to 16, Hebrews 4, 14 to 16. Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who's unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet he did not sin. Let us approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Friends, we can have confidence in prayer because we pray as those who are in Christ. We have our faith and hope and trust in him and we've been forgiven. We've been washed clean. Jesus makes our prayers acceptable to God. Read a helpful book on prayer some time ago by Paul E. Miller, Praying Life. And he had this to say, he said, prayer mirrors the gospel. In the gospel, the Father takes us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of salvation. In prayer, the Father receives us as we are because of Jesus and gives us his gift of help.

We look at the inadequacy of our praying and we give up thinking that something is wrong with us. God looks at the inadequacy of his son and he delights in our sloppy meandering prayers. If I'm brutally honest, I think sometimes that's a good description of my own prayer life at times, distracted at times, feels sloppy or meandering. And yet the truth is God delights in our prayers, not because they're great prayers or because we're going to have the right words to say in the right order, none of that.

But because we pray as one who was in Christ, we can feel like our prayers aren't all that good. But the Bible says because of Jesus, all our prayers are acceptable to God. That's a great encouragement to me and I pray it's a good encouragement to you this morning as one who's in Christ, your prayers are acceptable to God. So don't give up praying. Keep praying to God. That's why we pray in Jesus' name, not because it's a magic formula or something that guarantees the results of our prayers, but it's just a reminder of the reason why we can pray in the first place.

We pray in Jesus' name to acknowledge all the things that he has done for us and the fact that he makes our prayers acceptable to God. Thirdly, we see that the Spirit helps us to pray. So our Heavenly Father invites us to pray. Jesus' God's Son makes our prayers acceptable to God, but thirdly, the Holy Spirit helps us to pray. You don't need a degree in prayer or a course at Bible College. If you've got faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, you're qualified to pray. Just talk to God. Tell him what's going on, ask him, and he'll hear your prayer.

Romans chapter eight, verses 14 to 16, shows us the role the Holy Spirit has in helping us to pray. Romans 8, 14 to 16 says this, those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again. Rather, the Spirit you receive brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God's children. Paul writing to the Roman church there, he's saying, we've become children of God in verse 14.

In verse 15, he says the Holy Spirit helps us to call out to God our Father. Paul's point is that it's Christians who have the Holy Spirit indwelling in them. He can truly relate to God as our Dad. Again, it's this image of intimacy, a close relationship between a father and a child, whereby the Spirit leads us to cry out like a dependent child, craving the assistance and help that God provides. The picture we have of prayer is like crying out to God. It's an interesting picture when you think about it.

Your parents who have had kids, anybody who hasn't had kids, you've heard a child cry out. The image that probably comes to mind is babies crying. Often babies cry out, but we don't always know what they need. But they let us know that something's going on because they cry out. They can't articulate if it's a nappy change or food that they want. They don't have the words to say what it is that they need. But they make a noise and they let us know. They cry out to their Dad and their Mum. And that's the picture we have here calling out for God.

It's how we pray. Paul goes on in Romans 8 verses 26 to 27 to say that the Spirit can help us in those moments when we don't know what to pray. He says, in the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. We don't know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God. We might feel helpless at times when we pray, not know what to pray for in light of what's going on for us.

There's a good encouragement in these verses here that even if we feel that way, the Holy Spirit is with us and we can just rest in God's presence. And He will help us in that way. We can come to God. We can do our best. We can pray what we believe we need to be praying. And even if we're unsure about that, don't give up. Keep praying knowing that the Spirit is with us, helping us pray. There's an encouragement there for us, isn't there? The Holy Spirit helps us in our prayer. It's not just talking to God though.

If it's about relationship, it's a dialogue. It's listening to God as well. Remember, it's communion with God. It's how we grow in relationship with Him. It has to be a dialogue. That makes sense. If you think about any other relationship you might have, maybe a husband or a wife or a parent or a child, maybe a couple of friends, in any relationship, if one person does all the talking, that's going to make for a pretty one-sided relationship. It's not going to be healthy. Healthy communication requires listening, and so does our healthy prayer life.

Learning to hear God's voice is one of the most important tasks of a disciple of Jesus. We're going to focus in a bit on this listening briefly now. Turn in your Bibles to John chapter 10. John chapter 10. Starting at verse 1, John chapter 10, verse 1. Jesus is teaching here. He says, very truly, I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate but climbs in by some other way is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, the sheep listen to his voice.

He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he's brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice, but they'll never follow a stranger. In fact, they'll run away from him because they do not recognize the stranger's voice. Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them. Look at verse 7.

Therefore, Jesus said, very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who've come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved. They'll come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. It's amazing words from Jesus teaching his disciples there. He's using this imagery of shepherd and a sheep, and he likens himself to the shepherd and his followers, his disciples, as the sheep.

And if you look further down, he says, I'm the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and doesn't own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. The wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he's a hired hand and can'ts nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me. Just as the father knows me and I know the father, I lay my life down for the sheep.

I have other sheep that are not of the sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. You notice in that teaching, the sheep listen to the shepherd's voice. It's the defining characteristic of the sheep that Jesus is talking about. They listen to his voice. Jesus says that all those who are truly his disciples will know his voice. Notice in verse 3 there, he calls the sheep by name. It means Jesus speaks to us individually, personally.

Are you listening for his voice? Jesus says also that there'll be other voices that might call out to us as well. There's thieves and robbers. There's hired hands. We know that to be true. Our modern culture is a culture of noise. There are so many voices vying for our attention these days. It can be hard sometimes to discern and hear God in all that noise. But that's the task of a disciple. We need to learn to hear, to discern the voice of God amidst that culture of noise. So how do we do it? How do we hear God's voice over all that noise? Well, I think one of the first ways we learn to hear God's voice is to look to Jesus.

To come humbly before him like Mary did in Luke chapter 10. To just sit at his feet and to listen, to learn from him. To be a student of Jesus. Luke 10, 38, 39 tells us that Jesus and his disciples, they went to a village. We know this story, Mary and Martha. And Mary sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. God speaks to us in many ways. But Jesus is the foremost way that God, we can hear God's voice. In Hebrews chapter one, verses one to three, we read these words. In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways.

But in these last days, he's spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom also he made the universe. The son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he'd provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. The writer of Hebrews is saying, if you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus. If you want to hear God's voice, listen to Jesus. He's the exact representation of God's being.

Look at the life of Jesus and you'll see what God is like.

You'll see his character. You'll see his nature. That's why Jesus came to point us to God, to make a way for us to come into relationship with him. So the first way we hear God's voice is by looking to Jesus, by learning from him. Read the Gospels. Read what he said and obey it. Listen to God's voice. Not only that, but we've got the whole of the Scripture record, the whole of the Bible, not just the Gospels. We have the whole library of books that are in the Bible to help us know who God is, how he's made us, and how we can relate to him.

We have some records in the Bible, some of the books that we have in that library that we call the Bible. We have some records of God's audible voice from heaven. There are times when God actually did speak in an audible voice to people. You think of Moses on the mountain with the Ten Commandments and God spoke to him. You think of the prophets who heard the voice of God. Parts of the biographies of Jesus is Jesus actually speaking God's Word to us. But there's much of the Bible that just comes to us through the minds and imaginations and the biographies of the human writers who God, by his Holy Spirit, inspired and directed to record these things down for us.

All of it is useful in teaching us about who God is and about how it is that we're to live as his disciples. Reading Scripture is essential to hearing God's voice. We need to immerse ourselves in it. That's the second way. I think we also need to be aware that there are all sorts of ways to approach Scripture. Many Christians will have what they call a devotional time where you spend some time in the Word and in prayer with God each day, maybe at the start of the day or at lunch or in the evening.

Maybe all three, even better. But it's usually a time of personal study, maybe a Scripture memorization and reflection. That's what Christians talk about if they say they're doing their devotions. They're just spending time in the Word and in prayer with God. That's a good way to approach Scripture. Here at Kabbalja Baptist, we also encourage you to meet regularly around God's Word corporately or in community because that's another way that we can grow in God's Word and immerse ourselves in it. That's why we gather here on Sundays and meet around God's Word as a family.

That's why we encourage you to be a part of a midweek discipleship group because these are helpful times of feeding on God's Word and studying it together, seeking to find out what it means and how to apply it to our lives. Maybe Scripture memorization, as I mentioned that earlier, but that's another good way to immerse ourselves in the Word of God. God can use that Scripture that we've memorized that sinks into our heart to speak to us as we pray. Maybe you've heard of another way, an ancient way, developed many years ago by the monks geared to listening for God's voice as you read the Scriptures.

The monks called it Lectio Divina, not because they wanted to sound smart, but because it was a long time ago and they spoke Latin. It's Latin. I think it means spiritual reading or divine reading or something like that. How it works is Lectio Divina, you read a small passage of Scripture slowly and in a spirit of prayerfulness and quiet meditation with your heart open to receive whatever God is going to say to you as you read that text. You might ask the Holy Spirit as you come to Lectio Divina that to illuminate a word or a phrase or an idea, to kind of lift it out of the text and help you to apply it to your life.

It's a little bit different to Bible study, which Bible study is sort of asking what the original readers and hearers meant, what it meant for them and how to apply it to today. Lectio Divina is different because it's kind of asking how is God coming to me personally through this text? It's kind of a subtle difference, but it's another way that we can approach Scripture. You've got to be careful. We don't want to manipulate the Bible or allow the deceiver to manipulate the Bible like he tried to do with Jesus in the desert.

We're not looking for new meanings to Scripture. That's why Bible study is important. It keeps us grounded, keeps us accountable and orthodox. But Lectio Divina, we're looking for what's the aspect of the original meaning that the Holy Spirit wants to directly impress upon my life. I've included some information in the exercise this week about that. There's a guided exercise for Lectio Divina if you'd like to give that a go this week. As Pastor Doug said last week, we want to give you some tools to engage, to put discipleship in action.

We don't want to just learn information, but we want to be obedient disciples. So there's an exercise for you this week if you want to give that a crack. Another way we hear the voice of God is we ask Him to speak. We see that modeled in the life of a young boy in the Old Testament, Samuel in 1 Samuel chapter 3. Samuel was a young boy. He lived in the temple with a priestly family. He knew the rites, he knew the rituals, he knew the practices of the faith, but he didn't yet have a personal relationship with God.

And the story goes that one night, as he's lying in bed, he hears this voice calling his name, and he thinks it's the priest, Eli. And so Samuel gets up, he goes to the priest, he says, I'm here, you called me, and Eli's like, no I didn't, go back to bed. And so he goes back to bed. He hears his name called again, so he wakes up Eli a second time, I'm here, you called me, no I didn't, go back to bed. And then the third time it happens, and by this time, if I was Eli, I'd be pretty annoyed that I keep getting woken up and not calling the boy, but Eli obviously is figuring out that this could be God speaking.

And so he gives some really wise advice to Samuel, he says, go back and when you hear him call again, say, speak Lord, for your servant is listening. And that's exactly what Samuel does. He asks God to speak, and he says, I'm ready to listen. And that's a prayer we can pray, might be a dangerous prayer for you to pray, because when we pray that prayer, we need to be ready to obey what it is that he says. And I think that's sometimes the reason why we don't hear God speak is because we're not ready to obey.

But ask him, ask him to speak. Jeremiah 33.3 says, call to me and I will answer you, and tell you great and unsearchable things that you do not know. There's a promise in Scripture that God wants to reveal himself to us. He wants to be known, and he will speak if you ask him. I think we need to be mindful there are other ways that God might communicate with us. We're not going to go through these in detail this morning, but God communicates in nature. The Psalmist say to heavens, declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

God screams out in nature, and he can speak to us through that. There's a crazy story in the Bible where God spoke through an animal, through a donkey, to a dude. It's wild. But God can do that. He's God. God can speak through our circumstances, through just the journey of our life. He can also speak through the desires that we have. He gives us desires in our heart. And sometimes that can be God prompting us and leading us in a particular way. He also speaks through prophecy, dreams, or visions.

Particularly, we find that in areas where you don't have the Scriptures readily available. We do find that many people in closed countries, particularly in Muslim countries, I know a guy personally who Jesus appeared to him in a vision. There was no Scripture available to him at all. So those first two key ways, Jesus and Scripture, was not available to him, didn't limit God. God just gave him a dream and spoke to him, and he came to faith. It's amazing. So there's other ways that God can communicate with us.

But we need to listen for God's voice. We need to discern through all of that and work out is this God's voice. We need to hear it and obey it. And there's a word of caution about that. Listening to the voice of God does require what the New Testament writers call discernment. And this is just the ability to sift through the ideas, the events, the thoughts, the feelings, the circumstances of our lives and clearly see what is from God and what's from our own imagination or maybe from our parents' opinion or cultural liturgies of our day.

Discernment is all about sifting through all that and working it through and trying to figure out is this from God or not. We need to do that. We need to discern because otherwise we can go wildly off base and open up our life to lies from the world or the flesh and the devil. We need to discern. Discernment is both a work of the Spirit inside us and it's a skill that we develop and get better at over time with experience and practice. And discernment is something that we do in community. We don't do it alone.

That's why God has called us into a family, a faith. If you think God is speaking to you, test it. Does it line up with Scripture with the revealed character of God? If it doesn't, it's probably not God speaking to you because he'll never tell you to do something that's contrary to Scripture or his character. Maybe discuss it with a trusted Christian friend, maybe with your discipleship group or a pastor and weigh it against community and see together if you can discern what God might be saying.

God can and does use other people to speak to us at times, but it always lines up with his word and with his character. And finally, if you want to hear God's voice, I think the big one for most of us is we need to be ready to obey him when he does speak. We need to be ready to obey. Growing in discernment and with it our ability to hear God's voice and obey, that's a key task of a disciple of Jesus. Remember Jesus said, my sheep, listen to my voice. How we grow in the ability to discern Jesus' voice from all the other voices.

It's the same way we learn to discern the voice of our best friend or our husband or our wife or our parents when we're babies. The way to discern a voice is you spend a lot of time listening to it. That's the best way. You might have heard that phrase, I'd know that voice anywhere. You've probably heard of that before. Interesting story, Kelly and I were on a holiday with her parents. We were on a cruise ship, we'd never been on a cruise ship before. And as we're going about, there's people everywhere and seeing people all over the place.

Kelly said to me one day, I think I saw your Uncle Ken. He might be on this same boat. I don't know, I haven't talked to Uncle Ken in years. He was last living in Canada, hadn't talked to him in a long, long time. Anyway, we're going about next couple of days and all of a sudden I hear a voice behind us in one of the alleyways as we're walking along and it was my Uncle Ken. For sure, I could tell that voice anywhere. And so I turned around and sure enough it was and we were able to make that connection and reconnect and it was a wonderful time.

But it's like that. You spend so much time listening to a person's voice, you could know it straight away. You could hear it anywhere and that's what we want to do as we listen for God's voice. And friends, we do that by staying close to Jesus, by digging into His Word, by asking Him to speak and most importantly, being ready to obey when He does. The band can come back up, we're going to finish here. I just quickly mentioned the opportunity to engage this week. There's some exercises down the front here.

You're welcome to come and take one of those in the last song or after the last song. If we run out, we'll email them out to you so you'll have access to that. But spend some time in uninterrupted prayer this week. Ask God to speak to you as you pray. Listen to what God is telling you, record it, what you see, what you hear, what you feel, sense, or discover, and then share it with somebody. Share it with your discipleship group, share it with your husband or your wife, share it with one of the pastors.

Make a note of it. Let's pray and listen to God as we go out and cross the car park into our week. Amen.

Let's pray.

Father God, we do just want to thank you that you're a God who speaks and a God who listens. Lord, we thank you for this gift of prayer and the fact that you've invited us to pray. Thank you for Jesus who makes our prayers acceptable to you and the gift of your Holy Spirit who helps us when we pray, especially when we don't know how to pray. Father, we don't just want to talk to you, we want to listen. Help us to find that time, that uninterrupted moment where we can quiet down, disconnect, and just wait patiently for you to speak.

Help us this week, Lord, as we put this learning into action, as we seek to obey all it is that you've told us to do today. Help us to pray and to listen and to hear your voice. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.