This series of eight teachings is to help you hear the voice of God with greater clarity, consistency, and confidence. Your guide for this exciting journey is Rev. John Webster. It is our earnest prayer that your journey to hear God's voice is dramatically shortened and enhanced by this series with the first teaching entitled "Hearing God's Voice."

I want to welcome you to hearing the voice of God now. It's been a long journey for me learning to hear the voice of the Lord. It didn't just happen overnight. Wouldn't it be wonderful with regard to hearing God's voice if I could just lay hands on each one of you and impart a divine supernatural ability that from this point on you would be hearing God's voice with clarity, consistency, and confidence. And we could just get this all done this morning with laying on of hands and impartation of gifts and stir that up. I would like to do that, but it doesn't work that way. That's not how it's developed. That's not how it's imparted to us. It's a learning process, like almost everything we do - it's a process.

We learn it as we go and my process began some years ago in 1977 when I came to know the Lord - my heart was to always have an intimate relationship with the Lord and to bond with the Lord in a real intimate way.

That requires communication doesn't it. Ladies can tell us that the basis for a good relationship is certainly communication. We men sometimes don't really understand that, but it's true nonetheless that a good relationship is based on communication. It's the same with our relationship with the Lord.

If you're going to have a good quality relationship with the Lord, there has to be communication -- and if communication is strained and you find it difficult to hear God's voice - then probably you find your relationship with the Lord not where you want it to be -- that it is not to the depth that you would like it to be. So there's a real value in learning to hear God's voice. That's what we're going to be talking about for the next eight times that we're going to be teaching this series on hearing God's voice.

We're going to be talking about hearing the voice of the Lord in your inner man. On the inside and hearing it now. I'm a practical type of person. I love principles. I love truth. But I also like the practical applications of those truths. Tell me all that you want to tell me and tell me the theory behind it, and then tell me how I can use it right now. So as we teach hearing God's voice, one of our objectives is to help you realize you're hearing God's voice, that your hearing it right now, and that you can learn to recognize it -- that it is God. It's not the voice of your own heart. It's not just some thought process or daydreaming, but it's actually God speaking to you and once you learn to recognize that's really God you can believe it -- your can get a fluid dialog with the Lord -- He can begin to speak into your life. The communication develops the relationship.

I have done a lot research for this seminar, which I have been teaching for quite a number of years. As I was researching it and reading other people's material on hearing God's voice -- there's a lot of good information out there -- I've noticed that the standard approach in the teaching on hearing God's voice is hearing God's voice and the different methods that He speaks. God speaks through the Bible, doesn't He? Sure He does. He speaks in the pastor's preaching, He speaks in the counselor's counseling, He speaks through the teacher's teaching, He speaks to us in dreams and in visions, He speaks to us sometimes just through one another in conversations.

Those are all wonderful ways that God speaks, but what I want to talk about is when God has one on one dialog and communication with you -- He says something to you and you receive it on the inside in your spirit man -- what that voice sounds like -- How do we know it's God or maybe our own heart. How can we discern the two? And so what we're going to be talking about is the fact that you hear God's voice, that you probably have mistaken the voice of the Lord for the voice of your own heart. You've dismissed it as thinking -- well that's just me. Passed it off as just being your own thoughts or heart speaking to you . Not really recognizing it as being the voice of the Lord. We're going to help you identify it, recognize it, describe what the voice of the Lord sounds like when He really does talk to you -- so that you can fix on that and ignore the other which is the voice of your own heart.

We're also going to talk about what the voice of the Lord does not sound like. Some of the common misconceptions that we have that we can get hung up on or caught up in focusing on the misconceptions, and we're going to identify some of the common ones. So that when you come to hear the voice of the Lord, you can say well that's not God. That's one of the misconceptions I've been operating out of. I can set that to the side and focus on what really the voice of the Lord is.

And then implementing hearing the voice of the Lord in your every day life. God wants to speak to us as we prepare the sermons to preach, the teachings to teach, but God also wants to speak to us in every day life - about every aspect of our life. That's why this is immensely practical. As you go along in your daily life, that God can speak to you day by day -- in fact, even moment by moment, having open communication and dialog. I can't tell you what a blessing it's been to me to learn to hear the voice of the Lord. It's like having a continual conversation with the Lord as you're talking with the Lord day by day, driving down the street in your car, having a conversation with God.

There's a tremendous amount of things that He wants to tell us, that He wants to minister to us, that He wants to speak into our lives, and it is just a tremendous blessing to receive and to receive it with confidence. And please understand that to hear God's voice , it's not something that only advanced, very spiritual Christians do,. This is not step l0 or 20 in your Christian experience. This is square one, this is the basics. Every Christian should be able to say - I hear God's voice . I hear it clearly, consistently, and with confidence. That's not being spiritually proud. That's not bragging. That should be normal, everyday Christian life. This is the very basics. We should be able to hear God's voice and tell people that I hear it clearly, and I hear it with confidence. That's what Christian experience is about, communing with the Lord and dialoging with the Lord. That's one of the basics in our relationship with the Lord.

Then finally we're going to talk about what helps us to hear God's voice, what hinders us from hearing God's voice, and finally how can we release God's voice through us. So we just have a tremendous amount planned, and I trust that you are going to enjoy it -- and as I said early on, that when I first came to know the Lord in 1977, hearing God's voice was very difficult for me. I just didn't fall into it. It didn't come natural. It wasn't just an intuitive part of my Christian experience. I really struggled with it and I felt that I was called to ministry, so I knew it was real important for me to learn to hear God's voice to minister to others and yet it was such a difficulty for me and the way God made me - I'm an analytical type of person. I have a linear thought process. Analytical, reasoning -- things that don't make sense to me are real hard for me to get hold of. When somebody tells me well I can enter into this experience -- I want them to tell me -- okay, now explain this to me. Explain the experience. How I can validate it by the word of God , how I know it's really true, and then tell me how I can do it. Somehow my thought processes work that way. I can only say that God made me that way and because of that and because of that analytical reasoning that I have - maybe some of you have that too - it's real hard just to fall into things - just to tumble into them.

Hearing the voice of the Lord was that way for me. And feeling that I was called to ministry and called to minister prophetically to the Body of Christ, knowing that I was going to hear the voice of the Lord in order to prophecy over people and to have to hear it keenly and sharply -- I began a pursuit to hear God's voice. And for four, five, six years nothing happened -- and then finally Sept. 2, 1983, I had this major breakthrough. We were in a church service and I actually prophesied over three people in one church service. Wow! That was such a powerful move of God. That was a real breakthrough for me because I went for months and months - really more like years without anything. I kept saying , man I'm not getting anything. I'd ask God and talk to God and say I just don't hear anything and from that very early beginning back in 1983 and a continual process of learning and growing and developing until here we are fifteen years later and now the voice of the Lord flows clearly, consistently, and confidently.

That's where God wants to bring every one of us. In fact I was mentioning that I was in Israel just a month ago. The Lord had spoken to me some years ago as I was prophesying and gave me a prophetic word for Yassar Arafat and Hasne Mubarik and I just opened up and began to prophecy the word of the Lord. We were at a church service and I began to prophecy to the President of Egypt and to Chairman Yassar Arafat and the Lord even in these prophecies spoke some very specific things, primarily to Hasne Mubarik. Things that were going on in his counseling chamber and things that counselors would be telling him and how he was supposed to respond to those things. Things that were going to be happening in Egypt, including civil uprising was part of the prophetic word.

And so the Lord can speak to us in a very specific level. Now this process should not take fifteen years. This is not a fifteen year process to learn to hear God's voice. It doesn't take that long. God wants to boil it right down through the experience of the people that have gone on before and have heard these lessons. He wants to be able to convince and boil it down and teach you these lessons in just a very short period of time. One of my prayers and objectives for you is that my fifteen years of experience and the mistakes that I have made and the success that I have experienced - that I can boil all that down and give it to you in a weekend's time. This is not intended to be a long process. I had to learn it through the school of hard knocks. You get to hear it through a formal seminar. The seminar is easier. So if you want to avoid the school of hard knocks in learning to hear God's voice , I recognize that there is no substitute for experience, and I'm going to be giving you the truth and you're going to have to walk that truth out. That walking out process may take some years, but we're going to give you a tremendous head start on this process.

Turn to Genesis Chapter 1. We're going to talk about the first mention of the voice of the Lord as God spoke. Every one of you in here is hearing God's voice. We're not going to teach you how to hear the voice of the Lord because you're already doing it. Maybe you don't realize it. You don't know it, and if you were talking to me, you might say but I don't really hear God's voice. I've got some real good news for you. Yes, you do. You're already hearing the voice of the Lord, and you're hearing it for two reasons. There's two reasons why you're hearing God's voice.

The first one is because you're created to hear the voice of the Lord. God made you to hear His voice. You're hearing it because He made you, He designed within you the ability to hear His voice. In fact He's done this with all of creation. In Genesis, chapter 1 we find that all of creation is created to hear the voice of the Lord. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And then in verse 3, it says this. "Then God said." God used His voice. He spoke, "Let there be light." God used His voice in order to create -- and when He spoke, what is it that responded? What is it that existed that responded? You see God has created everything to hear and to respond to His voice.

When He designed us, in fact when He designed all of creation, He designed it with the ability to hear and respond to His voice. And so when God said, "Let there be light," whatever it was that existed in the nothingness and vacuum of space, before creation took place, heard and responded to the voice of the Lord, and there was light. In verse 6, it says, "And then God said, let there be firmament in the midst of the water and let it divide the waters from the waters." Again we hear God speaking. He spoke and creation responded, and then we had the separation of the waters. The creation of the atmosphere and the oceans , and the various things that were created. We see this process repeated throughout Genesis.

Verse 9 says, "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together." Verse 11 God says, "Let the earth bring forth grass." Verse 14, God said, "Let there be light." Verse 20, God said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly." Verse 24, God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures." Verse 26, God said, "Let us make man in our image."

God did all these creating through His voice, and when He spoke, His voice reached out and touched and created and caused things to happen. You see we hear God's voice because we were created to. The radio in your car or your home receives radio waves and can play music because it was designed to do that. That's the reason it was created. When God made us, all of the human race, He designed within us the ability to receive His voice, to hear His voice. It's part of the way we are made. In fact , you can't stop hearing the voice of the Lord. You'd have to do something very serious in order to stop. Just like you have natural ears that are hearing my voice now, they were created to hear sound. They always hear unless you do something to interfere with that. Put your fingers in your ears or unless they were damaged through an accident or disease, then you hear . You have eyelids for your eyes, but you don't have earlids for your ears. You don't always see, but you always hear. Isn't that right? We operate the same way in our inner man.

Revelation 2:7 says, "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church." We have spiritual ears and those spiritual ears are always hearing. So it's not an issue that I'm not hearing from God. Yes, we are. We're hearing from God because we're made to hear from God. We were created that way. Even the unbeliever hears from God. You don't even have to be a Christian to hear from God. How do we know that? Because in John 6:44 Jesus said, "Nobody comes unto me except the Father draws him."

In other words, the Lord has to speak to us. He has to communicate with us in order to bring us unto His Son. Isn't that right? How many of you are born again, blood washed, love God and experienced the salvation born again experience? Now you had to hear God's voice before you got saved because the Father draws you to Jesus. That's what John 6:44 teaches us so even before you knew God, you were hearing from God. Now that you're saved, you hear from God because you're a sheep of the good shepherd. So in Genesis chapter 1, God spoke and all of creation responded to His voice.

Then we have Genesis 2:19 , "And out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and He brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them." And whatever Adam called every living creature, that was the name of it. So there was this huge procession, all of creation, passing before Adam. I don't know if God classified them and categorized them. The insects and bugs came first. They all just came as they were. Who knows how it happened. But somehow every beast of the field and fowl of the air passed before Adam, and Adam named all of the animals. Now how is it that this grand procession of the animal kingdom took place. It doesn't say that Adam went and hunted them down. He didn't go on a National Geographic exploring adventure. It says that God formed every beast of the field and fowl of the air and He brought them to Adam.

So God brought all of the animals to Adam and caused them to pass before him so that he could name them. So this procession was orchestrated by God. God spoke to these animals and He told them to pass before Adam. God called them. He summoned the animals. So even animals hear and respond to the voice of the Lord. Genesis, chapter 7, when we read about Noah and the ark and God destroying the earth by water and preserving mankind. We know that God called the animals to the ark so that they could be preserved. 7 of clean animals and two by two of the unclean .

Genesis 7:6-9 says Noah was 600 years old when the flood of water came on the earth. Then Noah and his sons and wife and his son's wives with him entered the ark because of the flood water. So the first thing, we find is that Noah and his family have entered into the ark. So the human beings first go into the ark.

Verse 8 says of clean animals and of animals that are not clean and birds and everything that creeps on the ground went into the ark to Noah by two's, male and female, as God commanded Noah. When the animals got into the ark, it's not because Noah went on a great roundup, herded up all of these animals and drove them into the ark. It didn't work that way. Actually what happened is when Noah first went into the ark, he was in there. Then God spoke to the animals and they went up into the ark to Noah. Did you realize that's the way it happened? First Noah, then the animals came after him. God spoke to those animals. He communicated with them. God is the original Tarzan. He can speak to the animal kingdom, or Dr. Doolittle perhaps.

The point here is that God's voice communicates with all of creation. He has made all of creation with the ability to hear and respond to His voice. Even the animals respond to the voice of the Lord. He called them to pass in front of Adams. He called them to go up into the ark unto Noah. The voice of the Lord can communicate with all of creation.

In 11Chronicles 7:12-14 it says, "the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said to him, I've heard your prayer. I've chosen this place to myself for a house of sacrifice. If I shut up heaven and there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land." Notice that. "If I command the locusts." "Or if I send pestilence among My people, if My people which are called by My Name shall humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will heal their land."

I find a very interesting phrase here. The Lord say, "If I command the locusts". Apparently God even talks to the bugs. Now you may not think that you're the most spiritual person in the world, but God has created all of creation to hear and respond to His voice.

Luke 19:40, says, "If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheer." Now you may not feel like you're a prophet or pastor or healing evangelist or somebody that you would expect to hear God's voice, but I want you to know that you by virtue of the way that you were created, you hear God's voice.

You may say to yourself, but I'm just a new Christian. I don't really know that I hear God's voice, or I've not been really walking with the Lord like I should, I haven't really given myself to the Lord. I don't pray regularly like I should. I don't fast. I don't have confidence in myself. I'm not really in touch with the Lord. You may not feel like you're the most spiritual person around, but listen. If the animals can hear God's voice, if the bugs can hear God's voice, surely you've got to be more spiritual than a rock. Right?

Why do you hear? Because you're created to hear. Say I've been created to hear God's voice. You do it because that's the way you were made.

The second reason you hear God's voice is because you're a sheep of the Good Shepherd. We hear the voice of the Lord because we're born again. Because we've come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

In John:10:27, it says, "My sheep hear My voice." Now notice it doesn't say, my sheep sometimes hear My voice. My sheep on a good day hear My voice. Most of My sheep hear My voice. It says very conclusively, "My sheep hear My voice." There is no doubt in this verse. There are no maybes. There are no qualifications. No exceptions or exemptions. It's a statement of fact. How many know that when Jesus says something that it is absolute truth. The promises of God are yea and amen.. God is not a man that He should lie. Let God be true and every man a liar. Jesus made a statement and this statement is, "My sheep hear My voice." And that's an absolutely true statement. You hear God's voice. Jesus said it. That's the end of it. You remember the bumper sticker from years ago, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." I've heard it quoted a modified version. "God said it, that settles it, I believe it." I think the second way is a little better. God said you hear My voice. That settles it. It's already happening. It's happening to you moment by moment, day by day. If your heart is telling you no I don't, then you need to listen to the next session. We're going to talk about recognizing God's voice apart from the voice of your own heart. But first I want you to understand that you hear it and that you hear it because you are a sheep of the good shepherd.

Now there's a couple of hang-ups that we can have that are flesh or the devil or tradition or a number of sources that want to teach us that we hear God's voice. We hear God's voice because we are created to, because we are a sheep of the Good Shepherd. That's the reason.

We don't hear God's voice because we're righteous. It's not by your righteousness that you hear the voice of the Lord. You see there's something on the inside that says maybe if I fast or maybe if I pray, maybe if I was really in that place of intimacy. Maybe if I had given all of my heart to the Lord and I'm walking with the Lord more completely than I am now. Maybe then I'd be hearing the voice of the Lord. What we want to say is if I was more righteous, because really in my heart I accuse myself of being sinful and carnal and not walking with the Lord like I should. But you see it's not an issue of righteousness. You don't hear the voice of the Lord because you're fasting, praying, or doing what God has required you and commanded you to do. You hear His voice because you're created to and because you're a sheep of the Good Shepherd.

Let me give you an example of this. In Genesis 3:9, it says, "the Lord called to Adam." God is speaking. He speaks to Adam and He says to Adam, "where are you?"

Verse 10 of Genesis 3 says, "and Adam said, I heard Your voice in the garden." Adam is hearing the voice of the Lord. "And I was afraid, because I was naked. I hid myself." God said, "Who told you that you were naked". Have you eaten of the tree that I commanded you that you should not eat?" What going on here? Adam and Eve have just sinned. The reason that they know that they're naked is that they've eaten of the forbidden fruit, they've hidden themselves. They're in sin, aren't they?

Now understand something. This is not just the subtle little sin that we sometimes stumble into. Well, I wasn't thinking about it. I wasn't prepared for it. It just happened. This wasn't an incidental sin. Now all sin is grievous to God. I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of sin. This is just to illustrate how particularly serious this sin was. Not just disobedience. This is the granddaddy of all sins. This is the sin that plunged the entire human race under the burden of sin. This is the reason that you have a sin nature.. This is because they sinned. We call this the original sin. This is the fall of man. Romans tell us that all of creation groans under the burden of sin. God comes to talk to Adam and says, "Adams, where are you?" Adams says, "over here." God says, "Why are you hiding?" Adams says, "because I'm naked." God says, "Who told you that you were naked." They had dialog, communication. This is a conversation, isn't it?" And Adam is in the middle of a sin. He has not yet been forgiven. The word of God tells us that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. That is to say there has to be an atonement in order for forgiveness of sins and Jesus is the ultimate atonement, isn't He? That's why our sins are forgiven because He shed His blood on Calvary for our sins. But there had been no shedding of blood up to this point.

Now in just a few moments we could read in the book of Genesis that God is going to take an animal, skin that animal and take the skins and put them on Adam and Eve. There's going to be a shedding of blood in this process. That's going to be the first sacrifice that's going to begin the atonement process. There will be a forgiveness for Adams and Eve and their sin. That hasn't taken place yet. They're guilty, and while they're in the middle of sin unforgiven sin God says, then Adams says, then God says. They're having a conversation. Not because Adam is righteous. It's not because Adam has been forgiven. It's because He was created to hear God's voice.

Let me give you another example. Who is God speaking to when He said, "Where is your brother, Abel?" Who was He talking to? Cain, and where was Abel? He was dead. In fact we find that in Genesis 4:9, and the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother?" God said unto Cain. Cain said, "I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper?" Verse 10 says, "And God said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the ground."

Again, we find a communication, a dialog between God and man and again we find it in the midst of sin. Again, it's a very serious sin. Cain is the first murderer this planet has every known. He killed His brother Abel and Abel is crying out to God from the ground. In the midst of that sinful nature and that sinful event, God and Can are having a talk. Now I hope that you're not a murderer and even if you are there's forgiveness for that, isn't there? Here we have a murderer speaking to God, having a conversation with God. So you're not hearing God's voice because you're righteous. Now please understand me. Righteousness is a good thing, isn't it? God wants us to live a holy and upright life before Him, doesn't He? Absolutely. It's a very high priority to God for our lives, but it is not a basis for hearing God's voice. So it is greatly important, but it's not the reason that you hear God's voice.

It's necessary that you understand this because there's going to be a lot of times when you're going to need to cry out to the Lord or God wants to speak to us and you're not in the best place in your spiritual walk. Maybe you're not feeling good about where you are at with the Lord, maybe you haven't been doing some of the things I've been mentioning, praying regularly, having a consistent time with the Lord, and spending time in His Presence and the Word. Those are all wonderful and good things that I encourage you to do, but if you haven't been doing them you can still hear God's voice. Why? Because you were created to and you are a sheep of the Good Shepherd. That's why we hear God's voice. Isn't that good news? So you don't have to get hung up on having to be perfect before you can talk to God.

Now I fell into another category when I went off to Bible College. I spent four years there and earned my bachelor of Theology degree and we studied the Bible pretty much from Genesis to Revelation and a lot of other material as well. Some we studied book by book, others chapter by chapter, verse by verse, and a couple of the New Testament Epistles we studied word by word. We amassed a great deal of knowledge. Knowledge of the word of God is wonderful, valuable. If you don't have a systematic study of the word of God, I encourage you to being one very soon. But do you know how many times that I prophesied when I was in Bible College? How many times I heard the voice of the Lord and utilized the gifting that God has given me? I prophesied zero. None. Why is that? Because knowledge is a function of the mind and hearing God's voice is a function of the spirit-man -- and some of you are saying I'm not very qualified.

You know pastor has been to Bible college and he's got knowledge, he's further down the road so I expect him to be able to hear from God, but I really don't have that kind of history. I don't have that kind of training so I'm not sure that I can do the same thing. It's not based on your knowledge that you hear God's voice. It's no t because you've been to Bible college or have a bachelor's degree.

Even new Christians hear God's voice. In fact sometimes new Christians hear God's voice better than mature Christians. Why is that? Because they haven't had time for people to talk them out of it yet. They haven't had time to talk themselves out of it. They're so excited about knowing the Lord and so on fire for the Lord. They have so much love for the Lord that they are willing to step out in faith and they're just simple enough to believe they can do what the Book tells them to do -- that they hear God's voice. Soon enough they begin to hear the voice of the Lord over and over.

But as we serve the Lord, somehow we manage to talk ourselves out of the fact that we hear God's voice. We think that we can't do that. Maybe we want further training or education. Something of that nature. You don't hear God's voice because you've been educated in the word of God. You hear it because you were created to hear it and because you're a sheep of the Good Shepherd. Those are the two reasons that you hear the voice of the Lord.

Now let me make it very clear that I believe that a study of the word of God is invaluable and I encourage every believer to have a systematic study on an in-depth level of God's word. Because it is full of life, not just information, not just facts, not just truth, but life. Can you say amen to that? God's word is not just black ink on white pages, it is bursting forth in 3d living color ministering life to us. Study the word of God, but remember that that is not the basis for which you hear God's voice.

Now I said that we hear it because we are sheep of the Good Shepherd. And we looked at John 10:27 and I would like to show you a few other scriptures about hearing God's voice. Turn to John 10:27 which says, "My sheep hear My voice." But there are other verses as well. Now in the modern day of desk top publishing and computer assisted publishing, there is a lot of different ways that we can emphasize the printed word, isn't there? We can bold, highlight, underline, italicize, change fonts, put it in color, enlarge it, I mean, there are just a tremendous amount of different ways that we can emphasize the written word. But when the men of God in days of old were writing scripture on papyrus and scrolls and other materials available to them, they didn't do all of those things. So if God really wanted to make a point, I mean all of the word of God is important. All of it is God- breathed, and is given to us for life and godliness. When He really wants to emphasize something, how is it that God brings emphasis to His Word? He repeats Himself. So if God says anything once, it's true. It's life and is to be obeyed and given the utmost importance in your life. If God says it twice, freeze. Stop. Don't go beyond that point and listen. If He says it three times, fall to your knees and cry out. If He says it four times, just lay before the Lord and don't even think about getting up until you know that you know what He's saying to you. It's through repetition that God emphasizes something.

Now I want you see if John 10 what the Lord is saying about the voice of the Lord. First, it says, "My sheep hear My voice. I know them and they follow Me." Do you see that? You hear the voice of the Lord. You are sheep of the Good Shepherd. You're already doing it. Verse 3 of the same chapter says, "to Him the porter opens, and the sheep hear His voice and He calls His own sheep by name and He leads them out." Now God has said it two times. This is extremely important. Now in verse 4 of chapter 10, it says " He puts forth His own sheep. He goes before them and the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice." Then in verse 16, "and then the other sheep that I have that are not of this fold and them also I must bring and they will hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." God says it over and over and over. You hear God's voice. Now say it with enthusiasm. I hear God's voice. Now say it with gusto. I hear God's voice.

Now I would like to finish our first teaching by making this confession together because sometimes we need to hear it, we need to repeat it, we need to engrain it within our hearts and our souls. I would like you to repeat this with me. We want this to get deep down in our heart and our soul. Amen?

I can hear God's voice because He created me with the ability to hear Him. I don't have to be perfect or to know everything in order to hear Him. I hear His voice because I am a sheep. I choose to listen to God's voice. I will begin to hear with greater clarity, confidence, and consistency. The more I listen, the more I will hear. God, I commit myself to a higher level of listening and hearing your voice. Thank you, Lord, for wanting to speak to me and for the privilege of hearing Your voice. In Jesus' Name Amen.