Today’s New Covenant nugget is from John 10:27
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.
In today’s devotion we continue to receive revelation and understanding on hearing the voice of God and being led by the Spirit. The Lord wants us to hear His voice and follow it. He wants you to know the difference between His voice, the voice of your flesh and the voices of spirits of darkness that are trying to deceive you, misdirect you and place fear in your life.
The two primary ways that the Lord speaks to us is through His Word and through the Holy Spirit to our spirits. Today is part three of a devotional series, if you did not read part one or part two, please do so before reading this…
In today’s devotional we are going to be talking about Jesus speaking to us and leading us through the Holy Spirit to our spirits…
John 14:26 says, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”
The Wycliffe Bible translates it this way, “But that Holy Ghost, the comforter, whom the Father shall send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and shall show to you all things, whatever things I shall say to you He shall teach you all things, and shall show, or remember, to you all things, whatever I shall say to you.”
Jesus speaks to us, teaches us, shows us things and brings the things that He has said in His Word to our remembrance through the Holy Spirit. During thirty three years that Jesus walked the earth, He communicated the will and the words of the Father to Israel… now, in the New Covenant the Holy Spirit is the communicator… He communicates the will and the words of Jesus to us as believers.
The Holy Spirit mostly communicates to your spirit man, not audibly to your natural man… Jesus does audibly speak to people on occasions, but most of the time, He will either speak through His Word, or through the Holy Spirit to your spirit.
Discerning the voice of Jesus and the voice and leading of the Holy Spirit requires that you KNOW Him and that you have an intimate relationship with Him. If my phone rings and it is my wife calling… I instantly recognize her voice. If someone other than my wife says, “Hi Nick, this is Esther”, I will immediately KNOW that it is not Esther because I KNOW Esther and therefore I KNOW her voice.
A new believer, or a believer with a shallow relationship with the Lord will find it difficult to discern and to know the difference between the voice of their own flesh, or the voices of deceiving spirits who present themselves as the Lord. If you find it difficult to discern His voice, here is what I recommend…
Spend quality time in the Word EVERY day… spend quality, focused time in the presence of the Lord, worshipping, speaking in tongues and praying EVERY day… as you do, ask the Holy Spirit to lead you and ask Jesus to speak to you through the Holy Spirit. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to recognize and to discern when something is of Him and when it is not. Ask Him to speak to you and lead you in some small insignificant things that you can verify… that way you can start growing in your ability to hear Him and be led by Him… start with the small things and then slowly graduate to bigger things… always going back to the Word to verify.
In the next couple of devotions, I will add a few revelations that will help you further accurately discern His voice and His leading.
In His amazing love, Nick
