“Pastor, I heard a voice asking me to do something. How do I know if the voice I heard was the voice of God and not the voice of a stranger?”

Let me begin by sharing something I noticed just last Friday. A colleague came to my office to request for the contact number of a driver, my hands were full and I thought that the fastest way to get the number out was to ask Iphone’s “Siri” to open the contact of that person.

So, I said “Hey Siri”. If you’re familiar with how Siri or any AI voice assistant works, then you’d know that the moment you use that key word, the voice assistant will wake your phone to listen to the command that would be issued next. As expected, Siri popped up expecting an instruction from me. Just while I was about to talk, the woman that needed the contact began to rant about why I couldn’t just pick my phone and get out the number? I noticed that Siri was moving – which means it could hear what the woman was saying, but to my amazement, Siri went off merely seconds after the woman stopped talking.

I was so inspired that I wondered why Siri didn’t say or do anything. Then it occurred to me that Siri had been configured to only follow my voice. Siri knows my voice and it follows it, it will not follow the voice of a stranger.

Isn’t this the same way Jesus configured His voice within our spirit? Just because you heard other voices doesn’t mean you’d follow them. You may hear them, but your heart will definitely struggle to follow them. Anytime you find yourself struggling with the instruction that came from a voice in the spirit, it wasn’t the voice of Jesus you heard. If you hear the voice of Jesus, following is automated. Your body would have moved even before your mind completely processes what the voice said. Let me show you a scripture:

John 10:
2 But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
3 To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.
4 And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.
5 And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.

So the moment you receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour, you become His sheep, a kind of sheep that hears His voice. Just like I call Siri by name, He also calls you by name. He goes before you to lead your path, and you can comfortably follow because you know His voice.

Now notice verse 5, they will not follow the voice of the stranger, they will flee from him because they don’t have knowledge of a stranger’s voice. That’s how to identify a strangers voice right there, you don’t have knowledge of it. And because you don’t have knowledge of it, it will come with fear and doubt. The difference between the voice of a stranger and the voice of God is how the instructions from God’s voice enables you to act. God’s word is a Spirit that enlivens your body to act. The strangers voice cannot communicate spirit, so any instruction or information that comes from him will introduce fear and doubt.

Now don’t get me wrong, just because I said the Spirit will always empower you to follow the voice of God doesn’t mean that every instruction you receive from God’s voice would be easy. Some of them may cause you to weep. But even in that, you’d still be convinced that it was God who spoke to you.

I hope this has brought enlightenment to someone.

Remain ever blessed, in Jesus precious name!

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