Give Him Your Ear Pt2

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.

John 10:27-28, NLT

So y'all remember last week when we were discussing the smart home device situation? Well, there was another issue that many users were experiencing recently. The devices would start randomly talking, giving suggestions, playing music, or even laughing. Laughing y'all. The thang was cackling! Just randomly! With no command, no "wake up" cue from the owner, no prompting - they were just performing on their own. Honestly, knowing this about these devices made me think twice about my decision to get one. I mean, do I really want something listening to everything I do and say and then randomly giving its input with no invitation?

Hmmm...sounds familiar right? Isn't this oddly like those random times you hear these random thoughts that surely aren't your own, maybe suggesting that you're not good enough or pretty enough or smart enough? Maybe those voices are saying that you're a failure and that you'll never amount to anything. And sometimes it's not even random thoughts. Sometimes it's people that we know and love and maybe even trust a lot. Someone very close to you may have said something to you when you were a kid and now every time you're in a similar situation that moment and those words replay in your mind like somebody hit play on Spotify.

I was at dinner with a family a couple weeks ago and the dad was telling me about his device randomly talking with no prompt from any of them. So he

UNPLUGGED IT.

Dassit. He unplugged it. I know you're like, ummmmm Marquita. What does that have to do with the price of tea? Well, stay with me. This totally blessed me because by unplugging the machine, the dad took away its power to speak without invitation. You with me now? Sometimes, we can give outside entities, and even inside sources, too much power to speak into us and over us. We're probably not reading the Word consistently, so we run the risk of not even being able to recognize when something or someone is lying to us without invitation.

That's why this verse in John 10 is so important. We belong to God. So we build relationship with Him. And when we build relationship with God, we learn to recognize His voice. His voice is love, everlasting and eternal. His voice prospers and does no harm. His voice corrects and convicts but never condemns. His voice redeems and never rejects. His voice brings peace in the middle of panic and gives reason and rationale when everything around us is in chaos.

You remember being far away from the house and hearing your parent's voice from down the block? I've seen mothers sitting in a room and suddenly jumping up and run away because they heard their baby's cry among dozens of other children's voices. And there's a whole reality show contest on television right now that challenges people to recognize singer's by their voice alone.

The voice, communication, the way we receive information is vital to our life, health and strength. When we familiarize ourselves with the voice of God by reading His word and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in prayer, we can recognize it over the voice of the enemy any day. Please know that if the enemy is talking, he is lying. Every time. Unplug him from your life. Remove yourself from situations that are not healthy for you and surround yourself with people in places that love God. Community is important. Family is important. And learning the Voice of God is the most important thing you will ever do.

Give Him your ear and He will lead, guide and protect your life.