In John 19:14, 27 (NASB), Jesus declares that: “I am the good shepherd, and I know My own, and My own know Me . . . My sheep know My voice and I know them, and they follow Me.”
In these verses Jesus is comparing the close relationship that a shepherd has with his sheep to the close relationship that Jesus wants to have with those people who have accepted Him as their personal Savior.
One part of that close relationship is seen in the above verse where Jesus said that His followers know His voice and follow Him. Jesus wants to regularly talk with His followers to tell them how much He loves them, what He wants them to do, and also to give them some insight about how to live according to God’s principles as they go through their daily activities.
Hearing the voice of Jesus and hearing the spiritual messages from God is possible because God created mankind with not only a physical nature, but also with a spiritual nature so God could communicate with them and have a close relationship with them.
However, the problems of God communicating with people started after the original people, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God’s commandment by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Because of their rebellion they lost the special relationship that they had with God, fell into a sinful state, and greatly contaminated their spiritual nature.
Although Adam and Eve passed their problems down to their descendants through the ages, some people listened to God’s spiritual messages and lived according to His principles while the majority of people listened to demonic deceptions and rebelled against God’s principles.
Now, people can listen to God’s spiritual messages after they accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, have a restored spiritual nature, and ask the Holy Spirit to adjust their spiritual receiver so they can tune into the spiritual frequencies that God uses to communicate His messages to His people similar to the way that people are able to adjust their car radios to having the right frequencies so they can listen to their favorite music, sports, or information programs.
The more that Christians get used to hearing the voice of Jesus and God’s spiritual messages, the easier it will be to detect the difference when a deceptive or demonic spirit tries to force their way in and try to draw the person away from following God’s principles and into following demonic deceptions and fleshly temptations.
When Christians hear a strange voice or demonic deception, an inner voice and the warning from the Holy Spirit should go off inside of them saying that this voice did not come from God. Then, Christians can ask the Holy Spirit to use the spiritual gift of distinguishing of spirits (as described in 1 Corinthians 12:10) to tell them where that spiritual voice came from. If that spiritual voice was part of a demonic attack, then Christians can use the name of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to bind and cast the attacking demonic spirit away from them and into the abyss\lake of fire to live there forever.
As Christians develop a daily routine of reading God’s Word and talking to God in prayer about their problems, they can also listen to what Jesus wants to tell them about how to handle the problems of living according to God’s principles as they go through their daily activities in our modern society that is full of the rebellion against God’s principles for living found in the Bible.
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