Sheep know their master's voice. I am not a shepherd, but I'd guess it takes time. I would guess that you may be the same.
I only know you from your posts but it seems you want to be spiritually strong and do what God wants. When I was young, I too wished to be wise and knowledgeable and have a close and powerful walk with God. There were others, some younger in age, that were spiritually more mature than I.
You need to let that relationship grow over time. No one starts out mature in the spirit. Keep asking questions and reading Gods word for the answers. Ask other Christians for help understanding as you do here.
Do not be impatient for the maturity that will come.
I completely agree, but wanted to add to this.
27"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;
I used to get really annoyed when older christians quoted this. I tried for all my worth but still never heard God speak.
Then one day, I realised something that broke the log jam. Sheep most certainly can recognise their master's voice, but they also most certainly don't have a clue what he is saying
.
Many years after this revelation, I had the privilege of keeping a flock of sheep and learned the reality of this. All of my sheep were amazingly stupid and never comprehended a thing I said to them.
So what does the scripture mean? Is it really possible to hear God's voice?
Surprisingly, every single man woman and child who comes to God has already answered that and proven himself able to hear that voice!
Does anyone seriously think that their intellect worked it all out when they surrendered to Christ, when they came from death into life?
Trying to understand God via intellectual ability is contradictory to scripture, which states clearly that to an unregenerate man (ie. with a dead spirit), the story of the cross is foolishness. In other words your human intellect alone cannot possibly comprehend it.
The one and only reason that anyone comes to the Lord is because the Holy Spirit convicted him. The Holy Spirit called to his spirit, not his mind. He heard the master's voice, and like a sheep he followed.
Jesus's sheep allusion refers to the sound of the master's voice, not the content. That sound is a sound of peace.
Many here have focused on the content, saying that the voice of the spirit only points to Jesus, or agrees with scripture, etc. Yet we know that Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. Light is another word for truth. In other words, Satan can come bearing what we believe to be truth, even biblical truth. Satan is a past master at quoting scriptures so simply matching the words to the bible can be disastrous, and many believers have been deceived by it.
We must therefore come back to recognising the master's voice. That can only come by practice, and one of the best indicators of that voice is the peace that it gives deep within. That peace is not just an intellectual peace, but a spiritual peace that even those unschooled in scripture can receive.
Back to the sheep. Today sheep are left penned in a field isolated from people so they tend to flee at the sight of any humans. If we want to move them we drive them using sheepdogs or even an off road vehicle. Rather than knowing the master's voice, they are very fearful of it, just like many christians! This makes understanding the scripture very difficult.
In contrast, historically the shepherd would be out in the hills living with the sheep. He smelt like one of them and they knew and trusted him. He would have his own calls or whistles so that when he wanted to move to new pastures all he had to do was call and they would follow.
I experienced this in a very small measure when we had to bottle feed about five orphan lambs several times a day for months until they were sufficiently strong and weaned to release into the flock and into the hands of my other workers. Whilst they were with us, these lambs would happily run into the house if the door was left open.
One day many months after they had been returned to the flock, I had occasion to walk through the field. As usual, the whole flock ran to the far corner of the field. Suddenly, there was a loud bleating as five of them detached from the fleeing flock and charged back to me, all jumping at once just like when they were lambs. I was completely flattened under the weight of five fully grown sheep wanting to lick me.
Yes, sheep can recognise their master's voice, shape, sound smell etc.
Strangely, when I asked them to get off, they didn't take a blind bit of notice!
