And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.
John 10:4
Following someone is a social media byword. We see something or someone we like and we "follow" that person. Most times we then have access to their blogs and videos. Or we get a daily intake of whatever it is they are sharing about. This is a familiar process to most of us in this day and age of social media intake. But one things is certain, we must be careful whom we follow or we will find ourselves seeing or watching things that we don't want to see or watch.
Jesus constantly called people to follow Him. He called the twelve to follow Him. They left everything and followed Him. (Matthew 4:18-22) But others that He called to follow Him made excuses as to why they couldn't follow Him. (Luke 9:59-62). Furthermore, Jesus was not concerned about the quantity of people following Him. He was concerned about their quality. In Luke 14:26-33 Jesus had massive crowds following Him and turned and told them that He needed to be the top priority in their lives or they were not even worthy of following Him.
In the passage above Jesus shared how the sheep follow Him because they know His voice. There are many voices that cry out to us. They tell us that we need this or that. They tell us that fulfilment will come if we do what they say. It is easy to give in and follow the crowd or follow our own desires. The character of the sheep belonging to the Shepherd is that they both know His voice and follow His steps.
This is so important when we look at being a true follower of Christ. We must learn to hear His voice in the midst of all that is going on around us. This is not a mystical, magical voice we hear from the sky. It is the inward working of the Spirit of Christ guiding and directing our lives. And we need to hear what He says in His Word. If we don't listen to His Word, we will not hear His voice no matter what we say. God has given us the revelation of Jesus Christ in His Word, the Bible. As we read it and listen to it, we will begin to "weed out" the other voices that are not His. Then we can focus our full attention to following Him who has called us His own.
Blessings to you!
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