Feeding Lambs S1E4 “God Talks to Me”

Feeding Lambs is for our youngest believers and friends in the kingdom. In season one, we are mirroring Feeding Sheep in the sense that we are covering topics that are getting us “back to the basics.”

We will be discussing foundational truths in this season that everyone needs to know and be able to grow and build upon in the times to come. 

“God Talks to Me” uses John 10:27 as our text of choice and memory verse for the week. We will discuss how God speaks to us in everyday life. He talks through His word, by His Holy Spirit, through signs in creation, and through answered prayers.

While we communicate through our voice and spoken word, or sign language if we are hearing impaired, God’s most common way of speaking is not audibly. While there are examples in scripture where people hear His voice out loud, it is not the most common way that people hear Him today.

The written word is so important, because it is how we learn to discern the voice of God, his character and nature, and the lens by which we filter everything else through after learning to hear Him that way. Please help your child when reading scriptures and guide them in building the discipline of reading His word that will last a lifetime.

It truly is fascinating and life changing when we really understand the reality that God TALKS to us! I asked the kids today to think about how God has been talking to them. This would be a great start to discuss with your littles about them developing the way they hear from the Lord. Take advantage of this moment and engage with them!

We pray that you will listen with your children and let these “mini podcasts” be a doorway to having important conversations about living out their faith, and what it means. Take time to ask them questions and really engage in their spiritual walk! It’ll transform the whole spiritual dynamic of the family if you will.

Please feel free to let your children know that they can reach out—with help from their parents of course—with any questions or topics that they would like to see covered, or they can send in recordings of them doing their weekly memory verses! 

We want them to know that this podcast is just as much for them as it is for the teens/adults. Can’t wait to see how they grow from here!

God bless, and thank you for the opportunity to speak into their lives. What an honor it is!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Good morning, my little lambs. I pray that this message finds you well today. Have you been enjoying our Feeding Lambs podcast? Are you learning anything yet? Oh, I sure hope so. Today is episode four of season one, back to the basics. Do you remember from last week what our lesson or topic was going to be about today? If you remember, say it really loud wherever you are right now. Today's topic is going to be God talks to me. We know that he made us. We know that he loves us, that he chose us. And today we are going to learn how he talks to us. But first, we are going to do our memory verse like always. I'm going to read it first, and then you can read it or say it with me. So here we go. Brand new verse today. It comes from John chapter 10, verse 27. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. Now you read it with me. Here we go. My sheep hear my voice. And I know them. And they follow me. John 10, 27. Okay, so that one's kind of an easy verse for us to get to learn. And so this week, um, this topic is pretty personal to me. And so I always um try to write out my episodes because I want to um I want to stay on topic and I want to stay in our time limit because I know we only have so much time together. But today, I just want to talk to you from my heart. Because the reason I am where I am today is because God talks to me. Um because when I was your age, God started speaking to me in ways that I could not deny. And so today I just want to talk to you, um, not only from the scripture, but from my own personal experience. Okay, so there's no script today. Everything that you hear is either going to be straight out of the word or straight from my life. And so it's an honor and a privilege to be able to share that with you. So we know that the way that we talk to one another is with our words. We communicate through our voices, through our mouths, and we speak to one another. Some people they even communicate um through sign language, maybe because they are hearing impaired, or maybe because they are unable to speak, um, which is what we would call um mute. And uh so they have come up with a way to communicate that doesn't have a sound, but it is signs, and I I can't, I can't do a bunch of those signs. Um, so we communicate with one another, we talk to one another with our words, or we can talk to one another through sign language. And so the number one ways people will say, Well, how does God talk to you? Does he talk with a big booming voice? And um, to say that I have heard the voice of God, um I probably could say that only one time, and I've been alive for like 38 years. Um, and out of 38 years, um, there's one time in my life that I really believed that I heard the voice of the Lord. Um, and when I did, it was it was a very shaking thing. It rocked me to my core. And um don't know that I really ever want to hear it like that again. Um, but the main way that the Lord talks to us is with words, and it's through his word, his written word, um, the Bible. God wrote down um everything about himself, Jesus, uh everything about Jesus, everything about salvation and his plans and his character and who he is, all of it, um, well, not all of it, but most, most of it, a very good chunk of it, is recorded in the Holy Bible, in his scriptures. And so that is why, whenever we give our lives to Jesus and we become born again and we start following Christ, um, when we become his sheep or his sons and daughters, um that's why everybody tells us, read your word, read your word, read your word, because the first way that God talks to us is through his word. And when we know his word, um that's where our memory verse comes in. He said, My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. Another translation says, My sheep know my voice, and another they will not follow. Um, so we know him and we know what he sounds like because we've read about him. We know that if somebody, because of what we know about God's word, let's just say from our memory verse a couple of weeks ago, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life. So we know that if somebody says, God hates Susie, we know that that's not correct. God doesn't hate anyone. He that's not what his word says. When he communicates to us through his word, he says, I love you. I love everybody, I love the whole world. So if somebody tried to come in and say, Well, God said that he hates this group of people, or he, you know, whatever, that we know that that's not the character of God. That's not what he said. And so we're not going to believe that because it's not the truth. Um, and so we hear his voice and we know him and we follow him. And um by reading his word, um, it's not it's not hearing his voice like you hear my voice right now, but it is knowing him because of the things that he has spoken. The Bible says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And his name is Jesus. And so everything about this Bible, I know it looks like words on a page, it looks like any other book in your library, but it's not. This is God. This is himself. He put himself down in pages so that we could read him, so that we could hear his voice, and so that we could know him. Another way that the Lord talks to us is through the power of his Holy Spirit. Um, the Holy Spirit is not someone that you can see with your eyes, um, but he is a part of God, um, an invisible part of God, that when when Jesus went back to heaven, um, God sent a part of himself that was invisible to to our to our human eyes, and he sent this person, this part of himself, the Holy Spirit, to live inside of us and to speak to us and to guide us. And so when we're going about our day, and um, you know, uh we were thinking about, oh, well, I sure would like a piece of candy from my teacher's desk and she's not looking right now, I could just grab it and and go back to my desk. There's there's a voice inside of us that says, you shouldn't do that. You know that that's not right. You know that if you ask your teacher and it's appropriate, she'll give you that piece of candy. You don't have to do that. And that voice, that's the Holy Spirit. When you have those thoughts come to your mind and they tell you to do the right thing, that's the Holy Spirit talking to you. That's another way that God speaks to us. And so he speaks to us through his written word, he speaks to us through his spirit. Um, some people, he speaks to them through an audible voice. We can look in the scriptures and we can see that Jesus, when he was walking on the earth, he came to John the Baptist, who was baptizing people in the river Jordan. And the Bible says that Jesus told John, He said, I want to be baptized too. And John said, Oh no, I can't baptize you, Jesus. I can't, I'm not even worthy to tie your sandal or to unloose your sandal from your foot. And he said, No, John, he said, I want to be baptized. And so John baptized in the Jordan River. And the Bible says that the heavens opened up and that God's voice was heard by all the people. And he said, This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And the Bible says that the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove and lighted on the shoulder of Jesus. And so we see Jesus, we see the Holy Spirit, and we hear the voice of God, all three happening in one place at one time, in three different expressions. And um I know that might be a lot for us to take in, um, but God is so extravagant, he's so big, and he's so mighty, and he's he, there's so many parts to him. And he allows us to know him through his word, through Jesus, made flesh, through Jesus written down on all of these pages. Um, the Bible, from the front cover to the back cover, is all a revealing of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament is a revealing of Jesus Christ. And so he talks to us through his word. He talks to us with an audible voice, though not very many people have heard it. Um, it's not the normal, it's not the usual. The most common way he speaks to us is through his word. He speaks to us through his Holy Spirit that dwells within us when we become born again. And he also um will speak to us um through through creation. Um he said that that sometimes that the the the wind will blow and we will know, we'll just have a knowing, like we'll know that that's him talking to us or um him letting us know that he's there, or there will be um, you know, different signs. He said, I put he said, I put my rainbow in the cloud so that you would know that I'll never flood the earth again. So every time we see that rainbow in the cloud, God is speaking to us that his promises are yes and amen. His promises are forever, that he'll never break his promises to us. And uh, so that's a good example of knowing that he talks to us that way. And so I wonder how has God been talking to you? Has he been talking to you and maybe you just didn't know it? Um, another way that he speaks to us is through prayer, because we will talk to him and he will answer our prayers. And when he answers our prayers, even if the answer is no, he is communicating with us and we know that he has heard us. And so it's very exciting to know that the God that formed me, the God who loves me, the God who chose me, chose me, he also talks to me. And next week we are going to learn that God not only talks to us, but God listens to us. I hope you join me next week. Let's read our Bible verse, memory verse one more time. John 10, 27. He says, My sheep hear my voice and I know them, and they follow me. I love you. I hope you have a wonderful day and a blessed weekend, and I will see you next Friday. Bye.